Monday, December 05, 2011<\/p>\n
\n Many websites serve users from around the world. There are different approaches to serving content \n Today we’re going further with our support for multilingual content with improved handling for \n We’ve expanded our support of the \n To explain how it works, let’s look at some example URLs:<\/p>\n \n On all of these pages, we could use the following markup to specify language and optionally the If you specify a regional subtag, we’ll assume that you want to target that region.<\/p>\n \n Keep in mind that all of these annotations are to be used on a per-URL basis<\/b>. You should \n As always, if you need more help correctly implementing multiregional and multilingual websites,
\n appropriate to your users’ language and\/or region. Last year, we launched support for
\n explicit annotations<\/a>
\n for web pages rendering the same content with different language templates.\n<\/p>\n
\n these two scenarios:\n<\/p>\n\n
\n Australia, Canada and USA, differing only in price\n <\/li>\n
\n content targeting different regions. Example: a product webpage in German, English and French\n <\/li>\n<\/ul>\nSpecifying language and location<\/h2>\n
\n rel=\"alternate\" hreflang link<\/code> element<\/a>
\n to handle content that is translated or provided for multiple geographic regions. The
\n hreflang<\/code> attribute can specify the language, optionally the country, and URLs of
\n equivalent content. By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate
\n signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs
\n can be on the same site or on another domain.\n<\/p>\nAnnotating pages as substantially similar content<\/h2>\n
\n Optionally, for pages that have substantially the same content in the same language and are
\n targeted at multiple countries, you may use the
\n rel=\"canonical\"<\/code> link<\/code> element<\/a>
\n to specify your preferred version. We’ll use that signal to focus on that version in search,
\n while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you
\n have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the
\n Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
\n <\/strike>
\n Update:<\/b> to simplify implementation, we no longer recommend using
\n rel=\"canonical\"<\/code>.\n<\/p>\nExample usage<\/h2>\n
\n
\n region:\n<\/p>\n
\n take care to use the specific URL, not the home page, for both of these link elements.\n<\/p>\nMore help<\/h2>\n
\n please see our
\n Help Center article<\/a>
\n about this topic, or ask in our
\n Webmaster Help Forum<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n