ADR 0006: No hreflang tags or /fr/ URL prefixes

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-11-02

Context

The 2.0 plan listed /fr/ path prefixes and generated <link rel="alternate" hreflang> tags for the Nuxt module.

Decision

Don't generate either. Support shareable ?lang=fr links (queryParameter) instead.

Both hreflang and language path prefixes tell search engines that a translated version of the page exists at that URL. With translation in the browser, it doesn't: the server sends the original language. Advertising translations the HTML doesn't contain misleads search engines and can hurt how they treat the site.

Alternatives considered

• Generate them anyway, behind an option. Makes it easy for users to harm their own SEO without realizing.

Consequences

Sites that need multilingual SEO need server-rendered translations (vue-i18n), and the docs say so plainly. ?lang= covers the legitimate need: a link that opens in a given language.