Multiple languages using the same URL causes poor SEO

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 5.1 EE SP4 (5.1.7), 5.2 EE SP1 (5.2.5)
• Fix Version/s: 5.1 EE SP5 (5.1.8), 5.2 EE SP2 (5.2.6)
• Component/s: Portal Services > Localization
• Labels:
  • 5.2_release_notes
• Environment: All

Currently the same URL is used to display a website in multiple languages and this is bad for search engine optimization (SEO). To address this issue, a new property has been added to portal(-ext).properties which will automatically add the locale to the URL.

#

1. Set this to 0 if the locale is not automatically prepended to a URL. This
2. means that each URL could potentially point to many different languages.
3. For example, the URL http://localhost:8080/web/guest/home could then be
4. viewed by users in many different languages.
   #
5. Set this to 1 if the locale is automatically prepended to a URL when the
6. requested locale is not the default locale. This means that each URL
7. points to just one language. For example, the URL
8. http://localhost:8080/web/guest/home would point to the default language.
9. The URL http://localhost:8080/zh/web/guest/home and
10. http://localhost:8080/zh_CN/web/guest/home would both point to the Chinese
11. language.
    #
12. In cases where the prepended locale is "zh" and not complete locale
13. "zh_CN", then the full locale returned will be based on the order in which
14. the locales appear in the property "locales". If "zh_CN" appears before
15. "zh_TW", then "zh" will be a short hand for "zh_TW".
    #
16. The default language is set in system.properties with the properties
17. "user.country" and "user.language".
    #
18. Set this to 2 if the locale is automatically prepended to every URL. This
19. means that each URL points to just one language.
    #
20. Note that each language requires an entry in the property "locales" and a
21. servlet mapping in web.xml for the I18n Servlet.
    #
    locale.prepend.friendly.url.style=1