Auditing a multilingual site

How to handle a multilingual site in the SEO Audit and Topical Cluster. The crawler doesn't separate languages — it treats them as a single site. Depending on how they're structured — separate domains, subdomains or /en /it folders — the approach changes. With separate domains you just need one project per language; with languages in folders you need one audit per language using URL prefixes.

The SEO Audit and Topical Cluster are “language-blind”: the crawler doesn’t recognise or separate languages — it treats all scanned URLs as a single site. That’s fine for monolingual sites, but on a multilingual site it can mix languages in the same graph — and the Topical Cluster, which reasons about links and topics, suffers: it creates hybrid clusters, “cross-language” links that look like contamination, and poorly chosen pillar pages.

What to do depends on how the site separates its languages. Three cases.

1. Different domains per language → one project per language

If each language lives on a separate domain (ccTLD or distinct domains):

example.co.uk   ← English
example.de      ← German
example.fr      ← French

This is the clean case. The crawler stays on the project’s domain and doesn’t cross to other domains: each language is already its own site. Simply create one project per domain and run one audit for each. No special measures needed.

2. Language in a folder (/en, /it) → one audit per language

If the languages are on the same domain, distinguished only by path:

example.com/en/...   ← English
example.com/it/...   ← Italian
example.com/fr/...   ← French

Here a single audit scans all of them together. To analyse them one at a time, isolate the language from the Audit settings → Crawl → Include only URLs that start with:

https://example.com/en/

Run the audit, then change the prefix (/it/, /fr/…) and re-run: one audit per language. Each audit — and therefore each Topical Cluster — reasons about a single language.

The Crawl card in Audit settings with the Include only URLs that start with box highlighted and a language prefix entered, one prefix per line

Alternatively you can use Exclude URLs that start with to remove the languages you’re not interested in (e.g. exclude /it/ and /fr/ to keep only English).

3. Subdomains per language → depends on the project domain

If the languages are on subdomains:

en.example.com
it.example.com
fr.example.com

Note: the crawler considers subdomains part of the same site. Therefore:

  • If the project domain is the apex (example.com), the audit scans all language subdomains together → mixes languages.
  • Solution: set the project directly to the language subdomain (en.example.com): the audit stays on that language. One project per subdomain, as in case 1.
  • If you prefer a single project, the same trick as case 2 applies: Include only URLs that start with https://en.example.com/ and do one audit per language.

Reminders

  • Each audit consumes credits from the monthly budget (1 credit = 1 page with HTTP 200): more languages means more pages checked, therefore more credits consumed. Keep this in mind on plans with smaller budgets.
  • The Topical Cluster inherits the audit’s perimeter: isolating the language in the crawl automatically isolates the cluster map as well.
  • If the language is managed only via parameter (?lang=en), cookies or Accept-Language header — without distinct URLs — the crawler only sees one version (usually the default one): other languages can’t be separated. This is a known limitation.

See also:

Last updated: 5 September 2026