hreflang
Example: A bilingual taqueria adds an hreflang tag pairing its English menu page with its Spanish one, so a Spanish-speaking diner searching in Spanish lands on the Spanish version instead of the English page with a translate banner.
language tag, locale alternate
An HTML attribute (<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="...">) that tells Google which language and region a page is targeted at, and where the equivalent page in another language lives. The bilingual restaurant’s seatbelt against showing English search results to a Spanish-speaking diner who wanted Spanish.
Why it matters
If you publish English and Spanish versions of your menu page (or your whole site), Google needs hreflang to keep them straight. Without it, the wrong language can rank in the wrong search, you can split equity across both URLs, or one can be dropped from the index as a duplicate. The rules are unforgiving: every alternate must be reachable (no 404), declarations must be reciprocal (each page names every other), and self-referencing is required.
Frequently asked
What is hreflang?
hreflang is an HTML attribute (<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="...">) that tells Google which language and region a page is targeted at, and where the equivalent page in another language lives. The bilingual restaurant’s seatbelt against showing English search results to a Spanish-speaking diner who wanted Spanish.
Why does hreflang matter for a restaurant?
If you publish English and Spanish versions of your menu page (or your whole site), Google needs hreflang to keep them straight. Without it, the wrong language can rank in the wrong search, you can split equity across both URLs, or one can be dropped from the index as a duplicate. The rules are unforgiving: every alternate must be reachable (no 404), declarations must be reciprocal (each page names every other), and self-referencing is required.
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