Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. Correct Hreflang & Canonical Implementation for Multilingual Site

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Correct Hreflang & Canonical Implementation for Multilingual Site

    International SEO
    3
    8
    21726
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • KaneJamison
      KaneJamison last edited by

      OK, 2 primary questions for a multilingual site. This specific site has 2 language so I'll use that for the examples.

      1 - Self-Referencing Hreflang Tag Necessary?

      The first is regarding the correct implementation of hreflang, and whether or not I should have a self-referencing hreflang tag.

      In other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), I am uncertain whether the source code should contain the second line below:

      Obviously the Spanish version should reference the English version, but does it need to reference itself? I have seen both versions implemented, with seemingly good results, but I want to know the best practice if it exists.


      2 - Canonical of Current Language or Default Language?

      The second questions is regarding which canonical to use on the secondary language pages. I am aware of the update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines recently that state not to use canonical, but they say not to do it because everyone was messing it up, not because it shouldn't be done.

      So, in other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), which of the two following canonicals is correct?

      1. OR

      For this question, you can assume that (A) the English version of the site is our default and (B) the content is identical.


      Thanks guys, feel free to ask any qualifiers you think are relevant.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • KaneJamison
        KaneJamison last edited by

        As a 2014 follow up to anyone reading this thread, Google later released a tag labeled "x-default" that should make the self-referencing canonical question moot.

        Read more at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • KaneJamison
          KaneJamison @dohertyjf last edited by

          Thanks John - as mentioned on Twitter I appreciate you sharing tested results. Haven't had time to test on my own sites and certainly don't want to be testing on a client's live production site.

          I did notice that one of your posts (http://www.johnfdoherty.com/canonical-tag-delays-googlebot-web-vs-mobile-index/) does have the self-referencing hreflang but the Spanish version does not. Based on recreating your SERP screenshots myself, it looks like it's working fine.

          Also, I think my opinion on the Au/En version where you're geotargeting with the same language is that is should be set up the way you indicated, so I'm glad to see more testing that has confirmed that.

          Thanks for taking the time to answer - Thanks to Dave as well!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • KaneJamison
            KaneJamison @KaneJamison last edited by

            Thanks Mike.

            Regarding your comment on canonicals - I agree that separate languages should be treated with different canonicals - I think John's response above has confirmed my hunch with testing, however.

            Regarding hreflangs - I don't think there's any penalty either. The trouble is that Google, as many of us have experienced, often makes mistakes on code that should function fine. Google Authorship is a good example. So, just trying to work out the best practices for this before I make a client recommendation.

            Regarding feedback outside Moz - @IanHowells weighed in on Twitter. His opinion was (A) self-referencing is not necessary and (B) canonicals should be for each language, not pointed to the default language.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • dohertyjf
              dohertyjf last edited by

              Hey Kane -

              Jumping in here because I told you I would. I've seen it work two different ways.

              As you saw in my posts, I have the following configuration:

              • Self-referencing canonicals (/es/ canonicalizes to /es/, regular canonicalizes to itself)
              • HREFLANG point to each other as the alternate.

              When you search "canonical delays with Googlebot" in google.es, the English ranks first and then the Spanish. Of course, with the Spanish search "etiquetta canonical retrasa con googlebot" the Spanish one ranks. This is, of course, a test with two different languages.

              I've seen it work with two English-language URLs (Australia and English) where the following is what worked:

              • Canonical referencing the primary (English)
              • HREFLANG pointing to each other

              The title/meta description of the /au/ version disappeared because of the canonical but the /au/ version ranked in google.com/au instead of the regular URL.

              The self-referencing HREFLANG seems to not be necessary, but I've never had an issue using it. However, your mileage may vary.

              BTW, all of this testing was done by my coworker Dave Sottimano, not me. But these were the findings.

              KaneJamison 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
              • mike-ebert
                mike-ebert @KaneJamison last edited by

                I was so excited that I'd found something for you that I didn't read the first part of the article carefully enough. Here's what I think based on the principles of canonicals and hreflangs as I understand them:

                Since canonicals are meant to reduce confusion and duplicates, what could you do that would support that goal? If I saw multiple different versions of a product page that were essentially identical (perhaps they had different filtering options or search terms but resolved to the same content), then consolidating them all would make perfect sense. If, however, I saw two pages that had the exact same meaning but were in different languages, I would consider them as separate--you wouldn't accidentally mistake one for the other.

                As for hreflangs, the second article mentioned 4 versions of the content and listed all 4 hreflangs. The idea is that the search engine could discover all the versions of the content quickly and select the right one for the searcher's language and location. I can't imagine there being a penalty for listing every one, either.

                Have you had any other feedback (from outside SEOmoz)?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • KaneJamison
                  KaneJamison @mike-ebert last edited by

                  Thanks for your response Mike.

                  Re: Canonicals:

                  The first Google blog post you linked to is applicable when some of the content is translated. For example, if your English Facebook profile showed up on the Spanish section of the site, but they only translated buttons, nav menus, etc.

                  "We’re trying to specifically improve the situation where the template is localized but the main content of a page remains duplicate/identical across language/country variants."

                  So, this isn't a perfect match for my situation, which is a 100% translated page, which changes the reasoning behind the proposed canonical solution in that post - so that question is still in the air for me.

                  Re: Self-Referential hreflang Tags:

                  The second article is definitely relevant and is the primary announcement of hreflang, but doesn't clearly indicate whether the self-referential hreflang tag for the page you're on is necessary. Now, I've seen it used both ways successfully, so my first question is somewhat moot. John Doherty's testing from January 2012 and the homepage of WPML.org each use a different method, but Google.com and Google.es seem to be able to sort out each domain correctly.

                  mike-ebert KaneJamison 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • mike-ebert
                    mike-ebert last edited by

                    Google shared this post to define how to handle both issues: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/unifying-content-under-multilingual.html

                    The idea presented there is to pick the default language of the page--for most sites in the U.S. it would be English.

                    Then all the foreign language versions of the page should set their canonical to point to the page using the default language.

                    Finally, each page is to list the alternative languages with hreflang link tags.

                    An updated post says that ALL the languages should be listed: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

                    So I would set the canonicals to:

                    for all variants (in English or any other language)

                    and list all of the hreflang links on every page:

                    This would put you in compliance with Google's main post on the subject and their more recent update.

                    --Mike

                    KaneJamison 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    Browse Questions

                    Explore more categories

                    • Moz Tools

                      Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                    • SEO Tactics

                      Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                    • Community

                      Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                    • Digital Marketing

                      Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                    • Research & Trends

                      Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                    • Support

                      Connect on product support and feature requests.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • lcourse

                      Baidu Webmaster Tools: How to setup in "Site Properties" the field "Affiliate subject"?

                      baidu china baidu webmaster tools

                      Hi ,
                      finally I managed to setup my site in Baidu Webmaster Tools with the help of a freelance staff member in China. Site is verified and sitemap submitted. In section "Site Properties", field "Affiliate subject" I can't figure out after extensive search what I need to setup here for a foreign company without any presence and without company registration in China. Anybody can help? When I click on this field, it indicates "Site association subject is a necessary link for mobile resources to enter search." so my site will not show up in mobile results without it? Grateful for any tips on how to resolve this piece of puzzle of the baidu setup.
                      Thanks

                      International SEO | | lcourse
                      0
                    • Alex_Pisa

                      "Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to SERPs

                      canonical international seo

                      Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
                      We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Goal
                      We want local domains (be, ch, fr, etc.) to appear in SERPs and also comply with Google policy of local language variants and/or canonical links. Current solution
                      Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Issue
                      After Googlebot crawled the websites we see lot of “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in Coverage/Excluded report (Google Search Console) for most domains. When we inspect some of those URLs we can see Google has decided that canonical URL points to (example): User-declared canonical: None
                      Google-selected canonical: …same page, but on a different domain Strange is that even those URLs are on Google and can be found in SERPs. Obviously Google doesn’t know what to make of it. We noticed many websites in the same scenario use a self-referencing approach which is not really “kosher” - we are afraid if we use the same approach we can get penalized by Google. Question: What do you suggest to fix the “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in our scenario? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.

                      International SEO | | Alex_Pisa
                      0
                    • MMcCalden

                      Setting up international site subdirectories in GSC as separate properties for better geotargeting?

                      My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US. At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags. My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful  to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting. Many thanks in advance!

                      International SEO | | MMcCalden
                      0
                    • Substance-create

                      How do hreflang attributes affect ranking?

                      We have a site in English. We are considering translating the site into Dutch. If we use a hreflang attribute does that mean we have to create a duplicate page in Dutch for each English page, or does Google auto-translate?  How would duplicate pages, even if they are in a different language, affect ranking?

                      International SEO | | Substance-create
                      0
                    • Avid_Demand

                      Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues

                      Hi, Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example: https://www.example.com/es_ES/ https://www.example.com/fr_FR/ https://www.example.com/it_IT/ My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented: My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example: User-agent:* Disallow: /es_ES/ Disallow: /fr_FR/ Disallow: /it_IT/ This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt What are your thoughts? Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently? I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.

                      International SEO | | Avid_Demand
                      0
                    • SimonByrneIFS

                      Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?

                      Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince

                      International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS
                      0
                    • FlavoursMedia

                      Geo Targeting & Geo Keywords

                      Kindly clarify the below scenario. I have set Geo Targeting for my Website to 'India' in Webmaster tools. So Google should give preference for the searches happening from India. Is there any preference given for the Geo keywords? Like 'SEO Services in India' or Web Design Companies India' while searching from USA. Thanks

                      International SEO | | FlavoursMedia
                      0
                    • SOS_Children

                      Subdomains or subfolders for language specific sites?

                      We're launching an .org.hk site with English and Traditional Chinese variants. As the local population speaks both languages we would prefer not to have separate domains and are deciding between subdomains and subfolders. We're aware of the reasons behind generally preferring folders, but many people, including moz.com, suggest preferring subfolders to subdomains with the notable exception of language-specific sites. Does this mean subdomains should be preferred for language specific sites, or just that they are okay? I can't find any rationale to this other than administrative simplification (e.g. easier to set up different analytics / hosting), which in our case is not an issue. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

                      International SEO | | SOS_Children
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.