Remove x-default tag

[tobimori]

• Seems to be buggy right now
• Is meant to provide a link to a fallback (with a language/country selector) - not the default language

[delphinas]

Simple fix is this: 'href' => $this->page->url(kirby()->defaultLanguage()->code()) in meta.php

[wdebusschere]

@delphinas That is also how we do it, don't remove it.

[tobimori]

I'll have to dig deeper on what is the correct approach, but unfortunately don't have the time right now. Sorry.

[ovenum]

The href attribute for link tags with hreflang="x-default" should point to the same URL for every locale version of the page.

Maybe Kirbys link field can be used to pick the a page that should be used as default with a fallback to the default locale version of the page when not set.

[ovenum]

I can’t judge how bad the problem is for Search Engine ranking. But tools like ahrefs.com will list it as an issue if x-default links do not point to the same Url for each language version.

Maybe a minor release is okay where the default locale Url is used for x-default href attribute? Like this the behaviour is correct. Creating a proper interface and/or option for it can still happen in 2.0.0?

Can create a PR if you want. Heres a preview of the change

[tobimori]

Maybe a minor release is okay where the default locale Url is used for x-default href attribute? Like this the behaviour is correct.

This was my intention behind the original inclusion of the x-default attribute.

However I'm not sure if this is actual the correct behaviour. As Google specifies it, it's meant to show a general language picker page, like this: https://www.apple.com/choose-country-region/

Most popular sites that have lots of language don't specify x-default for this reason. This is why I'd remove it, since a language picker page is not a default behaviour of Kirby. If you still want to apply this, you could use computed content in page models.

[ovenum]

However I'm not sure if this is actual the correct behaviour. As Google specifies it, it's meant to show a general language picker page, like this: https://www.apple.com/choose-country-region/

Not sure it always has to be a language neutral page, it can also be the language version of a page that is most appropriate for visitors whose locale does not mach any of the locales offert on a page.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages

The new x-default hreflang attribute value signals to our algorithms that this page doesn't target any specific language or locale and is the default page when no other page is better suited. For example, it would be the page our algorithms try to show French-speaking searchers worldwide or English-speaking searchers on google.ca.

Looking at the example code from that link, it should be fine to point the default locale. Although this might not be what you want to do in every case. The information posted there is from 2013 though… so maybe this has changed in the past.

[leobardimpact]

In these Tell Google about localized versions of your page it says: "fallback page for unmatched languages, especially on language/country selectors or auto-redirecting home pages."

In multilanguage discussion, @bnomei mentiones to use use 'index' to get to the language-neutral auto-redirecting pages.

So I suggest to use:
$this->page->url('index')

This is included in #128