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Website Quality Alert - Country code used for content language specification
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html lang="en"><head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>Website Quality Alert - Country code used for content language specification</title> <meta name="referrer" content="unsafe-url"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://w3techs.com/s45.css"> <body> <script type="text/javascript"> var _paq = window._paq = window._paq || []; _paq.push(['trackPageView']); _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']); (function() { var u="https://m.q-success.com/"; _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'mtp']); _paq.push(['setSiteId', '2']); var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; g.type='text/javascript'; g.async=true; g.src=u+'mtj'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s); })(); </script> <noscript><p><img src="https://m.q-success.com/mtp?idsite=2&rec=1" style="border:0" alt=""></p></noscript> <div id=doc3> <div id=hd> <div id=hdl><a href="https://w3techs.com/"><img src="https://w3techs.com/logo1.gif" alt="W3Techs" width=150 height=50></a></div> <div id=hdc style="min-height:94px;height:auto;text-align:center"> <div class=banner><script>var _ama_pid=_ama_pid||Math.floor(Math.random()*2147483647);document.write('\x3Cscript src="https://b.w3techs.com/ajs/2/2/' + _ama_pid + '/' + encodeURIComponent(window.location) + '">\x3C/script>');</script></div><a class=no_und href="https://b.w3techs.com/">advertise here</a></div> <div id=hdr><b>provided by<br><a href="https://q-success.com/web_services">Q-Success</a></b></div> </div> <div id=mn> <a href="https://w3techs.com/">Home</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/technologies">Technologies</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/reports">Reports</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/apidoc">API</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/sites">Sites</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/quality">Quality</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/users">Users</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/blog">Blog</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/forum">Forum</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/faq">FAQ</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/search">Search</a> </div><div class=feat1><p>Featured products and services<a style="font-size:80%;font-weight:normal;position:absolute;right:1em;" href="https://b.w3techs.com/">advertise here</a></p><script>var _ama_pid=_ama_pid||Math.floor(Math.random()*2147483647);document.write('\x3Cscript src="https://b.w3techs.com/ajs/2/5/' + _ama_pid + '/' + encodeURIComponent(window.location) + '">\x3C/script>');</script></div><div id=bd><table class=tech><tr><td class=tech_sel> </td><td class=tech_main> <h1>Website Quality Alert</h1> <h2>Country code used for content language specification</h2> <p><p><strong>Problem:</strong></p> <p>The code of the content language defined for the web page is a known code, but considering other properties of the page, we believe that a country code was misused as language code in this case.</p> <p>We applying heuristics of commonly misused codes in certain contexts. An example is the code "ch" specified on Swiss websites, which would indicate that the page uses the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamorro_language">Chamorro language</a>.</p> <p>The list of correct language codes includes the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/">ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2</a> codes. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) provides the official <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry">language subtag registry</a>.</p> <p><strong>Impact:</strong></p> <p>According to the <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/">W3C Internationalization Best Practices</a>, language information is useful for things such as authoring tools, translation tools, accessibility, font selection, page rendering, search, and scripting. In practice, we see that localized search engines (such as google.it) make use of language information, so that missing or incorrect information may have a negative impact of search engine ranking. It is also likely to affect site visitors who use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader">screen readers</a> or spell checkers, in case an input from the user is expected.</p> <p><strong>Recommendation:</strong></p> <p>Always specify the content language with the correct language code, if possible using the ISO 639 codes. If you need to specify a country-specific variant of a language (which is recommended only if it makes a significant difference), then use the country code as subtag, e.g. "de-CH" instead of "ch".</p></td><td class=tech_add> </td></tr></table> </div> <div id=ft> <a href="https://w3techs.com/about" class=no_und rel=nofollow>About Us</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/disclaimer" class=no_und rel=nofollow>Disclaimer</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/terms_of_use" class=no_und rel=nofollow>Terms of Use</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/privacy_policy" class=no_und rel=nofollow>Privacy Policy</a> <a href="https://b.w3techs.com/" class=no_und>Advertising</a> <a href="https://w3techs.com/feedback" class=no_und rel=nofollow>Contact</a> </div> <div id=social_ft> W3Techs on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/w3techs"><img loading=lazy src="https://w3techs.com/pictures/LinkedIn.svg" alt="LinkedIn"> LinkedIn</a> <a rel="me" href="https://techhub.social/@w3techs"><img loading=lazy src="https://w3techs.com/pictures/Mastodon.svg" alt="Mastodon"> Mastodon</a> <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/w3techs.com"><img loading=lazy src="https://w3techs.com/pictures/Bluesky.png" alt="Bluesky"> Bluesky</a> </div> <div id=cp>Copyright © 2009-2025 Q-Success<br><br> </div></div>