Changes to your stores' hreflang tags

The way that hreflang tags are handled on your store as a result of onboarding your store to Shopify Markets is being improved.

Shopify automatically generates hreflang tags for all of your URLs so that search engines can understand which international experiences to direct customers to.

Currently, you have domains that offer a language experience other than your default language. However, these domains don’t have a supporting country or region. This means that the hreflang tags aren’t able to use accurate information for languages and countries or regions.

When you use Shopify Markets, hreflang tags that only target a language no longer exist. Instead, they're created for both the language and the country or region, and language that URL targets. This should improve the signal that your Shopify store sends to search engines, resulting in more accurate search engine representation.

Example

John has a store which he uses to sell to Canada in English and French, and to the United States in English. He has the following domains:

• johnsapparel.com which targets the United States in English
• johnsapparel.ca which targets Canada in English
• fr.johnsapparel.ca which doesn't target any country in French

After onboarding to Shopify Markets, fr.johnsapparel.ca targets Canada, French.

Currently, the hreflang tags for this domain are:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://fr.johnsapparel.ca/">

After onboarding to Shopify Markets, hreflang tags for this domain are changed to:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-ca" href="https://fr.johnsapparel.ca/">

Your store will be onboarded to Shopify Markets during the week of July 31st.

Opt out of automatic hreflang tag generation

If you want to use your own hreflang tags, then contact Shopify Support and request the deactivation of automatic hreflang tag generation for your store.