BUGFIX: Language fallback handling for canonical and alternate language links #154

Sebobo · 2021-01-25T16:24:00Z

The canonical link will now link to the original node if a dimension fallback is active.

The list of alternate language links will not contain nodes anymore if they don't exist in the target language.

Also the lang attribute of the html tag is now correct when a fallback is shown.

All three issues can be tested by browsing to /uk in the Neos.Demo.
lang should be en_US, canonical should link to it to and no alternate language link for uk should exist.

Without this change untranslated pages have canonicals to themselves instead of their fallback node if set.

regniets · 2021-01-26T07:37:05Z

Thanks for fixing this issue!

This is nevertheless a breaking change which could impact many websites to the negative.
You mostly have reasonable fallbacks like en-us > en which do make sense and should have hreflang and canonical to themselves.
But there are cases (like on neos.io) that fall back from de > en. Now your hreflang is faulty because you show english content flagged german.
I would not recommend merging this fix as it is. We could

Provide only a gist to show how to handle it (and/or write documentation for this special case)
Provide a feature flag in order to activate it in case you need.

What we are trying to handle might actually be quite an edge case...
What do you think?

regniets

Code is fine, but see my comment on use case.

Sebobo · 2021-01-26T08:36:54Z

I disagree that it's an edge case. Actually most projects I'm involved with which use multiple languages use fallbacks to completely different languages. Most of the time everything falls back to English and the customers want to have a full page tree in all languages as they don't know when they are able to localise everything.

I also don't really see the negative SEO effect. Why should the UK version when it's not localised have its own canonical and language link?

If this is really required to be defined on a per preset basis we might need additional options in the presets or in the SEO settings.

regniets · 2021-01-26T08:58:00Z

Got it - and good to know there are many websites that will benefit (so will neos.io)!

But we are introducing something that will have an effect on many websites that are using this package
(I would not want this to happen unnoticedly).

Flagging derivates is a main use case of hreflang. When i have a website for Austria (.at) that shares most of the content with the german version (.de) but has different products, i would want the austrian user to find austrian results (de-at).
If i let most of the pages point to their de version, austrian people would end up most likely on my .de website.

Sebobo · 2021-01-26T09:01:59Z

So you mean regarding the canonical and alternate language links the new behaviour should be behind a feature flag, which we might inverse with a major release?

regniets · 2021-01-26T09:04:14Z

Resources/Private/Fusion/Metadata/AlternateLanguageLinks.fusion

@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ prototype(Neos.Seo:AlternateLanguageLinks) < prototype(Neos.Fusion:Component) {
                @if.isDefaultLocale={props.defaultLocale == item.dimensions[props.dimension][0]}/>
            <Neos.Seo:AlternateLanguageLink node={item.node}
                @if.isNotAbsent={item.state != 'absent'}
+                @if.existsInTargetDimensions={item.node.dimensions == item.node.context.targetDimensionValues}


Checked the hreflang specs. We need to remove hreflang in the "unlogic fallback" case as nothing points to this version.
Actually "@if.hasNoForeignCanonical" needs to be adapted as it does have a foreign canonical
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/localized-versions?hl=en

Don't fully understand what needs to be done from your description.

actually something like
@if.hasNoForeignCanonical = ${String.isBlank(q(this.node).property('canonicalLink'))}
@if.nodeIsTranslated = ${this.node.dimensions == this.node.context.targetDimensionValues}
... line 5

Ah ok, so an additional check for the canonical

With the query @if.existsInTargetDimensions={item.node.dimensions == item.node.context.targetDimensionValues} no hreflang is output when I only adjust content on a page that has a language fallback.
We have now added the following queries in Neos.Seo:AlternateLanguageLink:
@if.hasMetaRobotsNoIndexNotSet = ${q(this.node).property('metaRobotsNoindex') || q(this.node).is('[instanceof Neos.Seo:NoindexMixin]') ? false : true} @if.hasNoForeignCanonical = ${String.isBlank(q(this.node).property('canonicalLink'))}

thanks to @regniets 😉

bwaidelich · 2021-01-26T09:07:10Z

I'm not into SEO that much (I just know that duplicate content is bad) so I can't really vote on this change. But from my own experience I can tell that breaking changes in this package can be very harmful because they can be quite subtle. When I updated a large project recently it introduced a different set of metatags leading to a downgrade on Google.
So in general I think, a feature flag might be a good idea.
And for the long run it might be a solution to have some more CLI tools to setup/verify SEO settings interactively

regniets · 2021-01-26T09:21:49Z

@Sebobo - i think a feature flag might be the best solution.
@bwaidelich - i just happen to have some knowledge in hreflang, but from my experience a lot of people don't - so i consider it dangerous as well. I like the cli tool idea; just the featureset of neos/seo is pretty advanced already, maybe there won't be so many options to be set.

Sebobo · 2021-09-01T11:27:46Z

A customer of mine required the same fix today for a project with many languages and 2 dimensions.
I applied it there including @regniets adjustments and will finish up this PR when they are happy with it.

kdambekalns

[…] and will finish up this PR when they are happy with it.

Any news?

regniets · 2022-10-14T16:20:56Z

indeed, got a customer project as well now that could need the fix :)

Sebobo added 2 commits January 25, 2021 17:16

BUGFIX: Use fallback node for canonical link

e269b41

Without this change untranslated pages have canonicals to themselves instead of their fallback node if set.

BUGFIX: Skip alternate language links to non translated pages

9f88a1c

Sebobo added the Bug label Jan 25, 2021

Sebobo requested review from regniets, jonnitto and mficzel January 25, 2021 16:24

Sebobo mentioned this pull request Jan 25, 2021

Neos.Seo - check fallback pages and add canonical and noindex, if it does work as expected neos/Neos.NeosIo#382

Open

BUGFIX: Render fallback aware html lang attribute

2d8fd9b

Sebobo requested a review from bwaidelich January 25, 2021 16:32

bwaidelich removed their request for review January 25, 2021 17:17

jonnitto approved these changes Jan 25, 2021

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kdambekalns reviewed May 30, 2022

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ahaeslich mentioned this pull request Mar 11, 2023

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BUGFIX: Language fallback handling for canonical and alternate language links #154

BUGFIX: Language fallback handling for canonical and alternate language links #154

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regniets commented Oct 14, 2022

BUGFIX: Language fallback handling for canonical and alternate language links #154

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BUGFIX: Language fallback handling for canonical and alternate language links #154

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