How can I exclude links to untranslated pages from Google search results?

Question

I have a multilingual site (English and Japanese). Japanese is the default language. Some pages have been translated into English and some have not.

I am using the XML Sitemap and i18n Modules as well as Translation Redirect (one of the i18n submodules).

For pages that are not translated into English, both the "English" and Japanese versions are appearing in Google search results-- even though there is no English version! (Both links appear like this:

• www.mysite.com/en/node/29‎
• www.mysite.com/ja/pathauto-url

I have two sitemaps (Japanese and English) made with the XML Sitemap module. The pages that have not been translated into English are still listed in the English site map, so I assume this is how Google found the pages.

How can I deal with this?

Is it possible to remove untranslated pages from the sitemap of the relevant language? Or is it possible to automatically redirect all untranslated pages to the default language?

Answer 1

When using i18n xml sitemap, and when you have a menu set to be included in a sitemap (using xmlsitemap menu), even if that menu is set to display only for one language (localized to Japanese or English in my case using i18n_menu), it will still get added to the sitemap for both languages.

So, in this case, one solution is to avoid using xmlsitemap_menu and instead use xmlsitemap_node and add the node links individually.

Painful but it works.