Google Adds New Link Element Markup For Multilingual Content

Google announced a new markup to communicate multilingual content to Google’s spiders. The new link element is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” where you define the language and location in the hreflang area. Here are examples of how you may use it respectively: https://www.example.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish https://es-es.example.com/ – is the […]

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Google Webmaster ToolsGoogle announced a new markup to communicate multilingual content to Google’s spiders.

The new link element is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” where you define the language and location in the hreflang area.

Here are examples of how you may use it respectively:

  • https://www.example.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish
  • https://es-es.example.com/ – is the version for users in Spain, in Spanish
  • https://es-mx.example.com/ – is the version for users in Mexico, in Spanish
  • https://en.example.com/ – is the generic English language version
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://www.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="https://es-es.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-MX" href="https://es-mx.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://en.example.com/" />

For more details on how to use this, see this Google help document.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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