Module 6: International and AI Search
Hreflang for multi-market sites, AI crawlers, llms.txt, and getting cited by ChatGPT and friends.
This module covers the two places search now happens beyond a single blue-link result: the multi-market web, where one site serves several languages and countries, and the AI answer engines, where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI surfaces decide which pages to cite.
For multi-market sites, hreflang is the routing mechanism that tells Google which URL belongs to which language and region. It does not rank you and it does not translate anything. It swaps the right regional page into the result so a searcher lands on the version written in their language and priced in their currency.
For AI search, visibility means being the page an engine cites when it writes an answer. That depends on three things you can control: whether the engine's crawler can reach your pages, whether the page is indexed and eligible, and whether it is written so an engine can lift a definition, a statistic, or a quote from it. Files like llms.txt help the assistants that read them, and they do nothing for Google Search.
The quiz below checks those core facts: how hreflang routes regional pages, which crawlers to allow or block, and what it takes for an AI engine to cite you.
What you will learn
- Read and correct hreflang language and region codes
- Build a reciprocal hreflang set with return links and x-default
- Choose between HTML, HTTP header, and sitemap hreflang methods
- Tell training crawlers from search crawlers and user fetchers in robots.txt
- Publish an llms.txt file to the v2 spec and know where it does nothing
- Audit a page's crawl, indexation, and quotability for AI citations
Key takeaways
- Hreflang is a routing hint, not a ranking signal or a redirect
- Every hreflang pair must be reciprocal, and the codes must use the right case
- x-default catches the users no language or region variant matches
- Block training crawlers and keep search crawlers open if you want citations
- llms.txt helps ChatGPT and Perplexity but does nothing for Google Search
- Quotable content, not schema, is what earns AI citations
Reading for this module
Module 6 quiz
Ten questions. Pass mark is 7 of 10. Retake as often as you like; your best score counts.