Why alternates pointing elsewhere are not counted
A site language is counted when the vendor serves that language from its own domain and declares it with an hreflang alternate. Alternates pointing at another domain, and x-default, are not counted, for every vendor alike. As of 2026-09-22.
| Tool | What is published | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Same-domain alternate | Counted | Applied to every vendor identically |
| Cross-domain alternate | Not counted | Belongs to the other domain |
| x-default | Not counted | Not a language |
Inclusion rule. One counting rule applied to every vendor. A vendor is never counted under a different rule because its setup is unusual. Order. As the rule is applied.
1A uniform rule matters more than the perfect rule
There are defensible arguments for counting cross-domain alternates: a vendor running a separate regional domain is genuinely serving that language. There are equally good arguments against, since the other domain may be a different company or a licensee.
What is not defensible is applying one rule to one vendor and a different rule to another. The register picks the narrower rule, states it on every page carrying a count, and applies it without exception.
2x-default is a routing hint, not a language
It tells a search engine where to send a visitor whose language is not covered. Counting it would add one to every well-configured site and nothing to a badly configured one, which measures configuration quality rather than language coverage.
Small decisions like this one are the difference between a count somebody can reproduce and a number that only this register can produce. Every one of them is written down.
3What this rule cannot see
A vendor that serves several languages without declaring alternates will be counted at zero here. That is a real limitation and it is the price of a rule that can be checked from outside: a declared alternate is verifiable in a second, and an undeclared translation is not verifiable at all without crawling the whole site.
Anyone who finds such a case can check it against the vendor's own pages in the same way this register does, which is the point of writing the rule down rather than only the numbers.
4The three columns behind this question
| Column | How many of the 18 tools name a list |
|---|---|
| Dialogue language | 5 of 18 tools |
| Document language | 1 of 18 tools |
| Site language | 9 of 18 tools |
Inclusion rule. The three columns this register keeps. A column stays listed even when no vendor names a list, because silence in a column is itself recorded. Order. Alphabetical by column name.
- Site languages15 languages: ar, de, en, es, fr, id, it, ja, ko, nl, pt, ru, tr, uk, zh-Hantdeclared as same-domain alternates
- Site languages20 languages: ar, de, en, es, fil, fr, hi, id, it, ja, ko, ms, nl, pl, pt, ru, th, tr, uk, videclared as same-domain alternates
5From a multilingual pipeline
On the language side of “How counted”, SceneMixer's published guides say the following:
Dubbing replaces the audio of a finished clip; the picture was generated for a different line, so mouth shapes, pauses and shot length all belong to the original language. Native-language generation gives the video model the line in the target language before it renders the shot, so the performance, the pacing and the cut points are built for that language.
SceneMixer, Native-Language Dialogue vs. Dubbing in AI Video (2026): Why the Cast Should Speak the Line (read 2026-10-13)
The project has one dialogue language; lines you write in another language are spoken as written after a confirmation.
SceneMixer, Dialogue language and video tier — “Can characters speak different languages in one episode?” (read 2026-10-13)
6Sources
Counts and lists are read from the vendor pages named in the register, checked 2026-09-22. The counting rule is on how counted. Nearby: Pages that disagree, Who names them.