A partner agency once put the question well. Their prospect wanted a store in French, English, German, Spanish and Portuguese, built on PrestaShop and connected to an ERP. Which structure works best for international search: a country domain per market, subdomains such as de.example.com, or subdirectories such as example.com/de/? Years ago I would have answered country domains without hesitation. After a few more projects the answer is more cautious. URL structure matters, but far less than the consistency between the market you target, the hreflang markup you ship and the content you genuinely localise.
What follows is the method I use today: decide between language and country targeting, compare the three realistic URL structures, set hreflang correctly, localise rather than translate, then roll out in stages. Most of these calls are expensive to reverse once a catalogue is live.
Why international search has to be planned
Cross-border buying is real but still a minority behaviour. Eurostat 2024 data reported in the European E-commerce Report 2025 (Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce) shows that 83% of EU-27 residents who had bought online in the previous three months bought from sellers in their own country, 33% from another EU country and 20% from outside the EU. The spread is wide: 20% of German online buyers ordered from a seller in another EU country, against 45% in Portugal and 39% in France. The dataset covers the EU-27, so it says nothing about UK buyers.
Language weighs on the decision to buy. The Can't Read, Won't Buy study from CSA Research (2020, 8,709 consumers across 29 countries) found that 76% of online shoppers say they prefer a product presented in their own language, and 40% say they never buy from a site in another language. Those are self-reported answers, not observed sales, but the direction is clear.
First decision: target a language or a country
The original question mixed two ideas. French, German, Spanish and Portuguese are languages, not markets: Spanish is read in Spain and in Mexico, Portuguese in Portugal and in Brazil. Before you argue about URLs, settle whether the site sells into a specific country, with its own prices, VAT, delivery and consumer law, or simply addresses a language community.
- Language targeting: one version per language, no country attached. It suits services, software and B2B that delivers anywhere. hreflang carries a language code alone, such as
de. - Country targeting: one version per language and country pair, such as
en-GB,en-IEorde-AT. You need it as soon as pricing, logistics or legal notices change between countries. - Mixed: the common case in e-commerce. For example
de-DE,es-ESandpt-PT, plus a genericenversion.
This choice sets how many versions you maintain, and therefore the translation and monitoring budget. Fix it before you sign the quote.
The three URL structures compared
Google documents four setups in its guide to managing multi-regional and multilingual sites: country-code top-level domain, subdomain, subdirectory, and URL parameters, which it advises against. The table compares the first three.
| Criterion | ccTLD (example.de) | Subdomain (de.example.com) | Subdirectory (example.com/de/) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geographic signal | Strong and automatic, one country per domain | Weak without hreflang | Weak without hreflang |
| Authority and links | Built again for every domain | Partly shared, often treated as a separate site | Concentrated on one domain |
| Cost and maintenance | Several domains, several Search Console properties, sometimes several installations | One domain, separate server configuration possible | One domain, one installation, one certificate |
| Language targeting without a country | Unsuitable, a ccTLD points at one country | Workable | Workable |
My answer today, for a company launching five languages at once on a single store wired to an ERP, is the subdirectory: one installation, one catalogue kept in sync, one domain whose authority benefits every version. The ccTLD earns its cost when you have a real presence in the country, meaning a subsidiary, local stock or local support. The subdomain suits cases where hosting or technology has to differ by country.
One point worth correcting in older advice: since 2022 Google has removed the International Targeting report from Search Console. You can no longer declare by hand which country a subdomain or subdirectory is meant for. Targeting rests on the domain extension, on hreflang, and on signals inside the content such as address, currency and language.
hreflang: the rules that trip most sites up
hreflang annotations tell Google which version to serve for which language or country. Google accepts three carriers and treats them as equivalent: link elements in the head, an HTTP Link header, or an XML sitemap with xhtml:link elements. For thousands of URLs, the sitemap is usually easiest to generate and check.
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://example.com/fr/produit/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-DE" href="https://example.com/de/produkt/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="https://example.com/es/producto/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-PT" href="https://example.com/pt/produto/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/product/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/" />The rules Google states, and the ones I check on every technical SEO audit:
- Reciprocity: every page lists all of its variants, itself included. If the German page does not point back at the French one, the annotations are ignored.
- Absolute URLs, with the protocol, pointing at the canonical version rather than a redirect or a blocked URL.
- Valid codes: language in ISO 639-1, country in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. A country code alone, such as
hreflang="FR", is invalid, and neitherUKnorEUis accepted. The United Kingdom isGB. - x-default: keep it for a language selection page or the default version.
- Agreement with the canonical tag: a page whose canonical points at another language cancels its own hreflang.
The hreflang error report disappeared along with International Targeting, so nothing in Search Console flags a broken annotation now. Check the markup with a crawler after every release, and watch how each version is indexed separately. A language that quietly drops out of the index is easy to miss in an aggregate curve.
Localise the content, do not just translate it
A site translated word for word is still the original in foreign dress. Google advises against adapting content by IP address, which it treats as unreliable, and its crawler works mostly from US addresses. You need distinct URLs per version, each with its full content, and a visible language selector rather than a forced redirect. What should genuinely change between versions:
- prices in local currency, applicable VAT and real shipping costs;
- payment methods people expect there and carriers they recognise;
- legal notices, terms of sale and returns policy matching local law;
- titles, meta descriptions, URL slugs and structured data in the language of the page, which is content work, not an afterthought for the developer;
- vocabulary and units. Brazilian Portuguese is not European Portuguese, and a page written for the United States reads oddly in the United Kingdom.
Machine translation has a place as a first pass on a large catalogue, but a native speaker should review pages that sell and anything with legal weight. Google's spam policies name scaled content abuse, which covers mass automated transformation such as translation with no added value, and doorway abuse, where pages or domains targeting different regions all funnel users to the same place. Five domains carrying identical English text under different flags fall into that second case.
It helps to know the competition. According to W3Techs (reading of 10 September 2026), 49.5% of websites whose language is identified are in English, against 6.0% in Spanish and 5.9% in German. A careful local version faces a thinner field.
Roll out in stages
Opening five languages on the same day multiplies the ways a launch can go wrong: a half-translated catalogue, incomplete hreflang, a support team answering in languages it does not speak. Start with your main market plus one test market, then extend.
- Phase one: the complete home-market version plus one more language and country, chosen on concrete grounds: demand visible in your orders, logistics you control, the ability to answer customers. hreflang and per-language sitemaps go in from day one.
- Phase two: measure for three to six months. Indexed pages per version, impressions and clicks per country, conversions per language. Framing that measurement is the same discipline as scoping an audit.
- Phase three: extend one language at a time, running the same checklist. This is also when to decide whether a market has earned a dedicated ccTLD.
On WordPress, the multilingual plugin decides much of this for you: how URLs are built per language, whether hreflang is generated, whether sitemaps are split. Verify all three before the first product description is translated, on WordPress or PrestaShop alike. Retrofitting them across a live catalogue is the expensive version of the same job.
Common questions
Do I need a separate domain per country to rank internationally?
No. A country domain such as .de or .es gives a strong geographic signal, but subdirectories and subdomains work too, provided hreflang is correct and each version has its own content. A domain per country earns its cost mainly when you have a real presence there.
Does hreflang improve a page's ranking?
No, it does not push a page up. It tells Google which version to show to which user, so a French page does not surface for a German searcher. Every page must list all of its variants, itself included, using absolute URLs that agree with the canonical tag.
Can I still declare a target country in Search Console?
No. Google removed the International Targeting report in 2022, along with the option to assign a country to a subdomain or subdirectory. Targeting now depends on the domain extension, on hreflang, and on signals inside the content itself.
Is machine translation enough for a multilingual site?
It can serve as a first pass on a large catalogue, but a native speaker should review anything commercial or legal before it goes live. Google's spam policies treat mass automated transformation with no added value as scaled content abuse, and region-targeted pages funnelling to one destination as doorway abuse.
Should visitors be redirected to their language automatically by IP address?
Google advises against adapting content by IP, which it treats as unreliable, and its crawler works mostly from US addresses. The safer pattern is distinct URLs per language, a visible selector, and at most a suggestion to switch rather than a forced redirect.
How long before a new market produces results?
There is no guaranteed timeframe. A new version has to be crawled and indexed, then earn links and usage signals in the country you target, which usually takes months. Track it version by version rather than at site level.