#11598 – Joomla 5.2 and multilanguage sites

Hi

I want both a self referencing hreflang tag AND a canonical.

Why do you need the canonical? do you have duplicates on the site?

If the "Site Domain" field is left empty (Plugins > System - SEF), in this case the language association tags are added but not the canonical URL tag.

The Site domain should always be left empty. Joomla is not able to add a proper canonical to pages, it only replicates the current URL in the canonical tag, ie if you visit:

https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en

canonical will be:

https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en

But if you visit:

https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en?fbclid=123456987

canonical will be:

https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en?fbclid=123456987

So:

1 - 4SEF does not deal with SEO, it only manages SEF URLs

2 - 4SEO can manage canonicals automatically. In the example above, 

https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en?fbclid=123456987

will receive a canonical of:

https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

For my peace of mind, I would like to set up a canonical as well.

You mean you want a correct and valid canonical, right? 

Not https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en?fbclid=123456987 when someone shared a link from your many sites on Facebook and Google picked it up?

If so:

1 - Joomla cannot do that and will never be able. The canonical it will output will always just be the same as current URL, not the canonical URL

2 - 4SEO will do that properly

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

I just want Google to be happy.

Google does not want or care about you having a self-referencing canonical on all pages. That absolutely does not matter and does not bring any benefit.

What does  matter - a lot -  is not NOT have wrong canonicals. It's always better to not have any canonical tags than the wrong ones. Which you are garanteed to have if you use the Joomla one (because it was not meant for this, it was meant for when the same Joomla instance can be accessed through several domain names).

I'm having only SEF troubles with Joomla 5.2 and multilanguage sites.

This is unrelated to SEF URLs, not sure what you mean by that.

I can not configure this with the Joomla system SEF plugin active. 

Again, this has nothing to do with SEF URLs, you are making a confusion because the "Domain" parameter in Joomla is located in the SEF URL system plugin. But your SEF URLs are fine as they are.

Is this possible with 4SEF?

Already replied to that: as you do not have a SEF URL issue, 4SEF is of no use, as its only job is to manage SEF URLs.

4SEO is our SEO extension, which among many other things, will automatically generate valid and proper canonical tags, including thes useless self-referencing canonical tags if you want them.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

A lot of my cliënts are using SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. The people operating these tools don't have a clue about the technical aspect. They only look at the score. If the score is bad, the website is bad.

And I work the opposite way, not caring about these scores but trying to do what's right.

If 4SEO can put a canonical with the self-referencing language tag I sure want to buy the extension. Does it work with Yootheme?

4SEO can handle canonical automatically.

Expected result If article 1 is accessed from the English menu:https://www.example.com/en/blog/article-1-en In the source code there should be 2 language association tags

You are mixing up two things that are totally unrelated. Joomla handles hreflangs perfectly. Canonicals are unrelated to hreflangs.

Simply, Joomla has no provision (and never will) to insert a valid canonical.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

This forces designers to defend themselves against customers and I don't think this benefits the Joomla comm

May be a key point. 4SEO is not aimed mostly at website integrators but like anything SEO, at the people running the website. Unfortunately, many integrators tend to sell a website to their clients, and include an "SEO" line items, which makes no sense as you don't "do SEO" when you create a site, SEO is a long game, mostly concerned with content and a few technical aspects which 4SEO takes care of.

Canonicals are unrelated to hreflangs. No, not true.

That's totally true. In your case, the important thing is having hfreflangs on the canonical versions of your pages. Canonical tag is useless on these. And of course you need both hreflang and a canonical tag on all duplicates versions of your pages.

If I turn on system plugin SEF the self referencing hreflang disappears

Yes, it's a long standing bug in Joomla. But it's an important one because if you use the Joomla SEF system plugin canonical features, most of the canonical tags created are wrong. And like I said, it's much, much better to not have any canonicals than having the wrong ones.

So you should never, ever use the Joomla SEF system plugins canonicals feature. If you don't believe me, try and reach out to Hannes Papenberg (on Mattermost) who created the Joomla SEF URLs code and still maintains it, he's very vocal about the canonical part.

I was looking for a temporary solution untill the bug is fixed.

That is my point. Even if that particular bug is "fixed", you will get a bad canonical on all pages where a canonical tag is actually needed. So you can make your client happy by ticking a checkbox ("yes, there's a canonical. But it's the wrong one - don't care, there's one/") or make your client happy by using something like 4SEO ("yes, there's a canonical.).

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr