From b13180fcdae8da72da006d666dc7609985dfd40d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Nicolas MASSE <nicolas.masse@itix.fr>
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2026 10:42:04 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] fix SEO of the english articles published in the french site

The canonical link and the noindex meta tag were never emitted on the
english articles published as-is in the french site, because head.html
was checking the language detection of the translation instead of the
current page. Hence, the original articles also advertised the french
copies as their translation through hreflang.

- emit canonical + noindex on the french copies (68 pages)
- only list real translations in hreflang, including the current page
- exclude the french copies from the sitemap and its alternates
- restrict the language detection to regular pages: list pages have
  no file and an empty content, hence they were always detected as copies

Refs #11

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YNHsWYTXPThURz6TbVS1j3
---
 layouts/_default/sitemap.xml            | 32 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
 layouts/partials/head.html              | 17 +++++++++----
 layouts/partials/lang-detection.html    |  2 +-
 layouts/partials/real-translations.html | 12 ++++++++++
 4 files changed, 57 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 layouts/_default/sitemap.xml
 create mode 100644 layouts/partials/real-translations.html

diff --git a/layouts/_default/sitemap.xml b/layouts/_default/sitemap.xml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f661f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/layouts/_default/sitemap.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+{{- /*
+  -- Based on the Hugo embedded sitemap template (v0.121.2).
+  --
+  -- The english articles published as-is in the french site are excluded
+  -- from the sitemap and from the list of alternates, since they are
+  -- duplicates of the original articles.
+  */ -}}
+{{ printf "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>" | safeHTML }}
+<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
+  xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  {{ range $page := .Data.Pages }}
+    {{- partial "lang-detection.html" . -}}
+    {{- if and .Permalink (not (.Scratch.Get "en_article_in_fr_site")) -}}
+  <url>
+    <loc>{{ .Permalink }}</loc>{{ if not .Lastmod.IsZero }}
+    <lastmod>{{ safeHTML ( .Lastmod.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00" ) }}</lastmod>{{ end }}{{ with .Sitemap.ChangeFreq }}
+    <changefreq>{{ . }}</changefreq>{{ end }}{{ if ge .Sitemap.Priority 0.0 }}
+    <priority>{{ .Sitemap.Priority }}</priority>{{ end }}{{ with partial "real-translations.html" . }}{{ range . }}
+    <xhtml:link
+                rel="alternate"
+                hreflang="{{ .Language.LanguageCode }}"
+                href="{{ .Permalink }}"
+                />{{ end }}
+    <xhtml:link
+                rel="alternate"
+                hreflang="{{ $page.Language.LanguageCode }}"
+                href="{{ $page.Permalink }}"
+                />{{ end }}
+  </url>
+    {{- end -}}
+  {{ end }}
+</urlset>
diff --git a/layouts/partials/head.html b/layouts/partials/head.html
index 9721db1..a54f132 100644
--- a/layouts/partials/head.html
+++ b/layouts/partials/head.html
@@ -92,8 +92,6 @@
 
 <!-- Deal with the case of english articles published in the french site -->
 {{- partial "lang-detection.html" . -}}
-{{- if .IsTranslated -}}
-{{- range .Translations -}}
 {{- if .Scratch.Get "en_article_in_fr_site" -}}
 <!--
   -- It's an english article published in the french site
@@ -101,12 +99,21 @@
   --
   -- See https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls
   -->
+{{- range first 1 .Translations }}
 <link rel="canonical" href="{{ .Permalink }}">
+{{- end }}
 <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
-{{ else }}
-<!-- Otherwise, just link to the available translations, if any. -->
+{{- else -}}
+<!--
+  -- Otherwise, link to the available translations, if any (including the
+  -- current page, as recommended by Google).
+  --
+  -- See https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions
+  -->
+{{- with partial "real-translations.html" . -}}
+{{- range . | append $ }}
 <link rel="alternate" hreflang="{{ .Language.Lang }}" href="{{ .Permalink }}" title="{{ .Language.LanguageName }}">
-{{ end -}}
+{{- end -}}
 {{- end -}}
 {{- end -}}
 
diff --git a/layouts/partials/lang-detection.html b/layouts/partials/lang-detection.html
index a196a20..61b21ed 100644
--- a/layouts/partials/lang-detection.html
+++ b/layouts/partials/lang-detection.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-{{ if and .IsTranslated (eq .Lang "fr") }}
+{{ if and .IsPage .IsTranslated (eq .Lang "fr") }}
   <!-- Try to compare files by SH256 fingerprint. -->
   {{ if and (index .AllTranslations 0).File (index .AllTranslations 1).File }}
     {{ $file0 := readFile (index .AllTranslations 0).File.Filename }}
diff --git a/layouts/partials/real-translations.html b/layouts/partials/real-translations.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3614b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/layouts/partials/real-translations.html
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+{{- /*
+  -- Returns the translations of a page, excluding the english articles
+  -- published as-is in the french site (they are not real translations).
+  */ -}}
+{{- $translations := slice -}}
+{{- range .Translations -}}
+  {{- partial "lang-detection.html" . -}}
+  {{- if not (.Scratch.Get "en_article_in_fr_site") -}}
+    {{- $translations = $translations | append . -}}
+  {{- end -}}
+{{- end -}}
+{{- return $translations -}}