Three languages, one business: which page comes first
The facts stay identical, the opening answer does not. Name, address, telephone and opening hours have to read the same in all three versions, because that is what machines compare, while the first paragraph differs because the three audiences arrive with different questions. Most trilingual sites do the opposite.
What has to be identical
Name, address, telephone and opening hours. These are the four values machines compare, and a version that translates the street type or reformats the number has created a second business in the eyes of anything checking agreement.
Consumers consult an average of six sources, and a system reading three of your own pages plus three external listings sees six statements. If two of them differ, the disagreement is yours and it was avoidable.
Opening hours deserve special care. 7 days with two times each is 14 values, and in three languages that is 42 values that have to say the same thing, which is why they belong in one structured block rather than in three paragraphs of prose.
The legal blocks are the exception that proves the rule: they have to differ, because the German imprint duty and the Spanish aviso legal name different items. Same business, two different lists.
What has to differ
The first paragraph. Each audience arrives with a different deciding question, and answering the wrong one costs the enquiry regardless of how correct the rest of the page is.
The examples too. A price in the currency the reader thinks in, a distance from a landmark they know, an opening time expressed the way they read it. These are not translation decisions, they are content decisions, and machine translation makes none of them.
And the volume. It is entirely reasonable to have 20 pages in one language and 1 in another, provided that one page is complete. A site with 20 machine translated pages in the second language is worse than one good page, because it multiplies the chances of a contradiction across the four values that had to stay identical.
| Element | Across versions | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Name, address, telephone | Identical | Machines compare these |
| Opening hours | Identical | 14 values per language |
| First paragraph | Different | Different deciding question |
| Examples and currency | Different | Written for that reader |
| Legal block | Different | Different duties per country |
How to declare the set
Reciprocal hreflang annotations, one per version including itself, plus an x-default. For three languages that is 9 references and 3 fallback lines, and without the reciprocity the whole set is ignored.
Then check it after every redesign. A template change that drops the annotations from one page breaks every pair that included it, which is a fault that produces no error message anywhere.
Questions and answers
Should all three versions have the same number of pages?
Can I translate the imprint?
What must never differ?
Why did my hreflang stop working?
Sources
- Google Search Central, Localized versions of your pages Reciprocity, x-default and the code standards
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 The six source average that makes consistency measurable
