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Should Hreflang x-default be on every page of every country for an International company?
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UPDATED 4/29/2019 4:33 PM
- I had made to many copy and pastes. Product pages are corrected
Upon researching the hreflang x-default tag, I am getting some muddy results for implementation on an international company site older results say just homepage or the country selector but….
My Question/Direction going forward for the International Site I am working on: I believe I can to put x-default all the pages of every country and point it to the default language page for areas that are not covered with our current sites. Is this correct?
From my internet reading, the x-default on every page is not truly necessary for Google but it will be valid implemented.
My current site setup example:
https://www.bluewidgets.com Redirects to https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as US/Global)Example Countries w/ code Site:- 4 countries/directories US/Global, France, Spain
Would the code sample below be correct?
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https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ (functions as US/Global)
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US/Global Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/
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US/Global Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/whizzer-5001/
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http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions for France)
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France Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/fr/fr/
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France Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products- https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001
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http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as Spain)
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Spain Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/
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Spain Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001
Thanks for the spot check
- Gravy
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Yes, your understanding of x-default is correct. The purpose of including it everywhere you have alternate HREFLANG links, is to handle any locales you don't explicitly include (to tell the search engine which is the default version of the page for other non-specified locales). And it should be included on each version of the page, along with the other specified alternate links for each locale. Alternatively, you could collect all of these centrally into the sitemap file, rather than inserting into each page. Both types of implementation are valid (but anecdotally I've had better luck with on-page tags instead of sitemap implementation).
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