Site owners managing international content face a key decision. Google’s John Mueller confirms US-specific folders do not impact SEO. Folder choice may help analytics, but rankings remain unchanged. Learn what matters for multinational sites.
For publishers running multinational websites, the question of whether to use a US-specific folder structure has long sparked debate. John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, addressed this issue directly in a recent Reddit discussion, clarifying that there is no practical SEO benefit to placing US content in a dedicated folder like /en-us/blog/ instead of simply using /blog/.
Mueller explained, “I don't think you'd see a practical SEO difference between using /blog/ or /en-us/blog/ for your US content.” He noted that while using a country-language folder structure can make it easier to filter and analyze metrics by region or language, it does not influence how Google ranks or indexes the content for search.
He also addressed concerns about duplicate content across different country or language versions. According to Mueller, Google may identify such pages as identical and select a canonical version, but the hreflang attribute will still ensure the correct URL is shown to users in each region. However, he recommended avoiding exact duplicates across hreflang versions to simplify reporting and management.
For sites with both global and country-specific content, Mueller suggested maintaining a single English version for general information, while localizing product or service pages as needed for each market. This approach can help prevent duplicate content issues and streamline site management. If duplicates do occur, hreflang will typically display the appropriate URL in search results, though Search Console reporting will focus on the canonical page.
This guidance aligns with Google’s broader approach to international SEO, where technical structure is less important than content relevance and user experience. For those interested in how Google handles other technical directives, the company recently clarified its position on LLMS.txt files and their lack of impact on search visibility in a related update: Google’s update on LLMS.txt files and search rankings.
