Gary Illyes from Google posted on the Google Search weblog about a number of the extra “hidden” benefits of utilizing hreflang x-default worth. As Gary famous on LinkedIn, “by the way, it might additionally assist with feeding Googlebot URLs that the poor factor in any other case may not see.”

No, this isn’t new, as Gary stated, however he thinks “it is fairly cool that it has “hidden” use circumstances.”

Gary defined within the weblog put up, “Whereas we do not speak a lot about it, the URLs you specify in hreflang annotations, together with x-default, could also be used for URL discovery. This may be useful for big websites with complicated buildings for instance, the place it is onerous to ensure each localized URL on the positioning is properly linked.”

Gary listed two further methods the hreflang x-default worth helps, exterior of simply serving to Google Search perceive your language pairs. They embody this uncover tip above and likewise a tip round conversions.

So test it out should you do any multilingual website positioning or websites.

Discussion board dialogue at LinkedIn.