Assigning domains and languages to markets

You can assign a domain and language to regional markets so that customers experience your store in a URL and language that's appropriate for their region. Domain and language customizations can help with international search engine optimization (SEO) and make your store feel local to customers in different countries.

A domain and language customization is a combination of a URL structure and a language for a specific market. When a customer visits your store, their location is used to identify their market and direct them to the appropriate domain and language.

You have three strategies for structuring international domains:

Domains and languages inheritance

Submarkets inherit domain and language settings from their parent market by default. If you customize domain or language settings on a submarket, then they override the parent's settings.

If a submarket has multiple parent markets that have differing domain and language settings, then the experience that the merchant gets is determined in the following order:

1. Same host and language. When possible, an exact match is preferred.
2. Same host, different language.
3. Different host, same language.
4. Alphabetical. If customizations can't otherwise be prioritized, then the first market alphabetically is used.

Language selection is prioritized in the following order:

1. The language explicitly requested by the customer.
2. The language currently being used by the customer.
3. The domain's configured default language.

For example, a customer visits your store at mystore.com/fr, and then selects the Canadian market. Their experience depends on the customizations that you've set up:

• If mystore.ca supports English and French, then the customer is directed to mystore.ca/fr.
• If mystore.ca supports only English, then the customer is directed to mystore.ca.

Adding languages to your store

Before you can assign a language to a market, the language must be added to your store.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Languages.

2. Click Add language.

3. Select the language you want to add.

4. Click Save.

After adding a language, you can translate your store content using the Translate & Adapt app.

Translating your store content

The Translate & Adapt app helps you to translate your store content into the languages you've added. You can use automatic translations or provide manual translations for more control.

The Translate & Adapt app can automatically translate your store content using machine translation. Automatic translations are a good starting point, but you might want to review and refine them for accuracy. For more control, you can manually translate content in the Translate & Adapt app. You can also import translations using CSV files.

Beyond translation, the Translate & Adapt app lets you create custom content for specific markets. For example, you can adapt product descriptions, promotional banners, or legal text for different regions, even if those regions share the same language.

Add a domain and language customization to a market

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Markets.

2. Click the market that you want to customize.

3. Click the icon next to Domain / language.

4. Choose your domain strategy:

   • Subfolder: Your market is served from a path on your primary domain (for example, yourstore.com/fr/).
   • Subdomain: Your market is served from a subdomain (for example, fr.yourstore.com).
   • Separate domain: Your market is served from a different top-level domain (for example, yourstore.fr). The domain must be connected to your Shopify store in Settings > Domains.

5. Select the Language for the market.

6. Click Done.

7. Click Save.

International SEO

Properly configured international domains improve your store's visibility in search engines for customers in different countries and languages.

Hreflang tags

Hreflang tags are automatically generated for your store based on your market and language configuration. Hreflang tags tell search engines which version of a page to display to users based on their language and region. This helps prevent duplicate content issues and ensures that customers find the right version of your store in search results.

For example, if you have a French subfolder (yourstore.com/fr/) and an English root domain (yourstore.com), then hreflang tags are generated that tell Google to display the French version to French-speaking users and the English version to others.

For more information about SEO and international domains, refer to international SEO.

Automatic redirection

When a customer visits your store, they're automatically redirected to the domain and language that matches their location. This behavior is based on the customer's IP address and browser language preferences.

Customers can change their country or language using the country and language selectors on your store. After switching, their preference is saved for future visits.

Troubleshooting domain issues

Subfolder URLs returning 404 errors

If you deactivate a market that used subfolders, then those subfolder URLs stop working. Set up URL redirects in Online Store > Navigation > URL Redirects to point customers to the correct page.

Customers seeing the wrong language or domain

Review the following if customers are being redirected to the wrong version of your store:

• Ensure your markets are active and correctly configured with the right countries.
• Verify that your domain and language customizations are assigned to the correct markets.
• Check that automatic redirection is working by testing from different locations or using a VPN.