Link HREFLANG
If you work on a website that is offered in more than one language, you deserve a medal. The need to localize almost everything is tough and sometimes feels very limiting. No adding text to imagery, never knowing how different translation will affect layout, maintaining different templates, etc. A very necessary task but damn, it can be tough.
Here's one easy part of localizing that's easy: adding link
elements which reference alternate URLs per language. Here's how you'd use it:
<!-- Used on CNN --> <link href="http://edition.cnn.com" hreflang="en-gb" rel="alternate" title="CNN International" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://arabic.cnn.com" hreflang="ar" rel="alternate" title="CNN Arabic" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://mexico.cnn.com" hreflang="es" rel="alternate" title="CNN Mexico" type="text/html"/> <!-- Used on MDN --> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ar" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ar/docs/Web/CSS" title="ورقة الأنماط الإنسيابية"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="bn-BD" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/bn-BD/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ca" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ca/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="cs" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/cs/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/es/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fa" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/fa/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="id" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/id/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/it/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ko" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ko/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="nl" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/nl/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="pl" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pl/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-BR" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-BR/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-PT" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-PT/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="vi" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/vi/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-CN" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/zh-CN/docs/CSS" title="CSS"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-TW" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/zh-TW/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
The code is very self-explanatory so I won't break it down, but it's something you should be adding when a page is available in more than one language.
Does this redirect users to a culture’s URL matching the system language? Also what does the
title
attribute do, I notice it’s only locaized in Arabic?Is this actually used by any browser and/or Google?
Added updates gentlemen!