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How does hreflang improve accessibility and user experience? The article says "You can improve the user experience" with it, but never actually demonstrates th

How does hreflang improve accessibility and user experience? The article says "You can improve the user experience" with it, but never actually demonstrates that. It then starts talking about some SEO stuff, but it's still not super clear what it actually does?

orwin 3y ago
It doesn't improve my life, at all. When I have questions about a concept and I use the english word for it (because I never learned CS in French and would not understand the French page), the first Wikipedia page will still be in French, because of those shitty tags. Honestly, those are only useful if the words are the same in multiple languages. As for me, this recent changes get on my nerves, and are one reason why I'm not using Google anymore.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Is it because of those tags? Or is it just because Google on its own has done a comprehensive job of indexing and incorrectly thought you wanted the French version?
  - tambourine_man 3y ago
    There's just no way to convince Google to use English-only when I'm in another country other than using a VPN. I changed the settings multiple times, disabled the auto-detect language, but it always leaks in on suggestions or results. Just like there's no way to make Youtube disable autoplay of videos. One week later or so, it reverts back to its default behavior. Or for Google to respect that the account I'm using right now is the one I want to use instead of the first one I logged in many days ago.
    - stephenr 3y ago
      I mean look I have to sympathise with Google here. They've no doubt had the entire combined wisdom of Google looking at this problem and clearly there is just no way for human beings to comprehend what the `Accept-Language` header does. /s because, you know.
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        Maybe if we ever reach AGI I can ask it kindly to respect my checkboxes.
      - account42 3y ago
        It's absurd how they keep finding new ways to make this worse. They have ignored `Accept-Language: en` for a long time but used to at least have a link to switch to the english version. Then that link stopped appearing on search result pages and now it doesn't even consistently show up on the home page. Now it seems they don't even fully respect the account language wile logged in. WTF. While on vacation google decided to switch me to chinese even though I was logged in with an account that was set to english for decades on a browser that didn't change. The only way to change that back is to go to your account settings, and all the links leading there are ... in chinese. Even once back home this language change persisted. At no point did Google ever get an `Accept-Language: zh*` from me or any other indication that I wanted to switch languages besides the IP I'm connecting from which means fuck all.
        tambourine_man 3y ago
        My guess is it's a mixture of malice (I know this person said it doesn't want X, but maybe we can sell them X in this particular situation, so just go for it anyways) and pure simple incompetence and lack of communication in a large enough org
        stephenr 3y ago
        > pure simple incompetence Hanlon's razor strikes again. The other day someone here (ostensibly a site for tech people) argued that the `Accept` header is useless, we can all just put random query string parameters or extensions in the URL to tell the server what content type we expect back, so I wouldn't be surprised if Google developers simply fail to see the point of the Accept-Language header.
      - dev_slash_null 3y ago
        Except, in non English speaking counties, the vast majority of people do not change the Accept-Language header (through various browser/OS mechanisms), and receive default results. But then experiments show that they are more likely to interact with pages when shown in the languages Google thinks you actually use. If you go to myaccount.google.com/language , you can remove languages you don't actually speak, or turn off automatically adding languages altogether. It doesn't always work for everything, but it's a good signal. I agree there should be a way to force this better, but there's a bunch of work being done on it. You can add a hl=en parameter to the URL, and most Google apps will respect it.
    - andylynch 3y ago
      You don’t even need to travel - I’ve seen Google decide at different times that I should be getting Polish, French, or Portuguese, instead of English from my desktop in London.
    - dev_slash_null 3y ago
      You can add a "hl=en" parameter to the URL, and most Google sites should respect it.
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        The “skeleton” of the site usually does, but not the content it pulls. Search results and suggestions are notorious offenders.
    - eddd-ddde 3y ago
      Hmm my google chrome seems to correctly handle everything in English. It must be a combination of setting my machine locale to English and probably on my Google account as well, no need for vpns.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      > There's just no way to convince Google to use English-only when I'm in another country other than using a VPN. There are browser settings you can force or failing that, an extension.
    - sam_lowry_ 3y ago
      What about http://google.com/ncr http://google.com/ncr for No Country Redirect?
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        Yeah, those were the days, but that doesn't work anymore. I see plenty of Portuguese results in google.com, even though I have only English as “Preferred Language” and “Automatically add languages: Off” in https://myaccount.google.com/language https://myaccount.google.com/language Same with all the other rants above. Turning off autoplay in Youtube has become a weekly tradition here, like watering the cactus.
- stevage 3y ago
  Ha, I once had the exact opposite problem. I studied part of my CS degree in France, in French, but for some reason when I went to sit the exam, they thought I would like to have the exam in English. I freaked out - I didn't know any of the terms in English, only in French. Fortunately they had a spare copy in French for me to work from.

orwin 3y ago

It doesn't improve my life, at all. When I have questions about a concept and I use the english word for it (because I never learned CS in French and would not understand the French page), the first Wikipedia page will still be in French, because of those shitty tags. Honestly, those are only useful if the words are the same in multiple languages. As for me, this recent changes get on my nerves, and are one reason why I'm not using Google anymore.

madeofpalk 3y ago
Is it because of those tags? Or is it just because Google on its own has done a comprehensive job of indexing and incorrectly thought you wanted the French version?
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  There's just no way to convince Google to use English-only when I'm in another country other than using a VPN. I changed the settings multiple times, disabled the auto-detect language, but it always leaks in on suggestions or results. Just like there's no way to make Youtube disable autoplay of videos. One week later or so, it reverts back to its default behavior. Or for Google to respect that the account I'm using right now is the one I want to use instead of the first one I logged in many days ago.
  - stephenr 3y ago
    I mean look I have to sympathise with Google here. They've no doubt had the entire combined wisdom of Google looking at this problem and clearly there is just no way for human beings to comprehend what the `Accept-Language` header does. /s because, you know.
    - tambourine_man 3y ago
      Maybe if we ever reach AGI I can ask it kindly to respect my checkboxes.
    - account42 3y ago
      It's absurd how they keep finding new ways to make this worse. They have ignored `Accept-Language: en` for a long time but used to at least have a link to switch to the english version. Then that link stopped appearing on search result pages and now it doesn't even consistently show up on the home page. Now it seems they don't even fully respect the account language wile logged in. WTF. While on vacation google decided to switch me to chinese even though I was logged in with an account that was set to english for decades on a browser that didn't change. The only way to change that back is to go to your account settings, and all the links leading there are ... in chinese. Even once back home this language change persisted. At no point did Google ever get an `Accept-Language: zh*` from me or any other indication that I wanted to switch languages besides the IP I'm connecting from which means fuck all.
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        My guess is it's a mixture of malice (I know this person said it doesn't want X, but maybe we can sell them X in this particular situation, so just go for it anyways) and pure simple incompetence and lack of communication in a large enough org
        stephenr 3y ago
        > pure simple incompetence Hanlon's razor strikes again. The other day someone here (ostensibly a site for tech people) argued that the `Accept` header is useless, we can all just put random query string parameters or extensions in the URL to tell the server what content type we expect back, so I wouldn't be surprised if Google developers simply fail to see the point of the Accept-Language header.
    - dev_slash_null 3y ago
      Except, in non English speaking counties, the vast majority of people do not change the Accept-Language header (through various browser/OS mechanisms), and receive default results. But then experiments show that they are more likely to interact with pages when shown in the languages Google thinks you actually use. If you go to myaccount.google.com/language , you can remove languages you don't actually speak, or turn off automatically adding languages altogether. It doesn't always work for everything, but it's a good signal. I agree there should be a way to force this better, but there's a bunch of work being done on it. You can add a hl=en parameter to the URL, and most Google apps will respect it.
  - andylynch 3y ago
    You don’t even need to travel - I’ve seen Google decide at different times that I should be getting Polish, French, or Portuguese, instead of English from my desktop in London.
  - dev_slash_null 3y ago
    You can add a "hl=en" parameter to the URL, and most Google sites should respect it.
    - tambourine_man 3y ago
      The “skeleton” of the site usually does, but not the content it pulls. Search results and suggestions are notorious offenders.
  - eddd-ddde 3y ago
    Hmm my google chrome seems to correctly handle everything in English. It must be a combination of setting my machine locale to English and probably on my Google account as well, no need for vpns.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > There's just no way to convince Google to use English-only when I'm in another country other than using a VPN. There are browser settings you can force or failing that, an extension.
  - sam_lowry_ 3y ago
    What about http://google.com/ncr http://google.com/ncr for No Country Redirect?
    - tambourine_man 3y ago
      Yeah, those were the days, but that doesn't work anymore. I see plenty of Portuguese results in google.com, even though I have only English as “Preferred Language” and “Automatically add languages: Off” in https://myaccount.google.com/language https://myaccount.google.com/language Same with all the other rants above. Turning off autoplay in Youtube has become a weekly tradition here, like watering the cactus.
stevage 3y ago
Ha, I once had the exact opposite problem. I studied part of my CS degree in France, in French, but for some reason when I went to sit the exam, they thought I would like to have the exam in English. I freaked out - I didn't know any of the terms in English, only in French. Fortunately they had a spare copy in French for me to work from.