hreflang implact study

Hi,

I'm doing a study on hreflang and sites that use it for ccTLD's compared to sub-domains. The objective is to determine what is the optimal strategy for i18n for more traffic:

1: One domain for all languages
2: Subdomains for languages
3: Subdomains for languages and locations
4: Subdomains for languages and ccTLD's for locations
5: Just ccTLD using the language for only one country

I have a feeling that option 5 with subdomain for language and ccTLD for location would yield the best results. But to push my project forward I need to do a study and get solid numbers.

Methodology:

1 - Get list of sites for each strategy
2 - Get date of implementation
3 - Look at Semrush (api) for those sites for traffic changes since they implemented hreflang ( Semrush has rankings by country)
4 - crunch numbers and see if there are any trends that are emerging

***What I would need is to get a list of sites that used strategies 2 to 5 so far this has been hard to find good implementations (amazon class sites do not count as Google will bend over backwards for them). I would appreciate any help with listing of the sites (in the case of blackhatworld if you could just mention what are the brands that are using it.) ***

Any help is appreciated.

I will share my conclusions at the end of this study.

this is a great idea and although i can not help you at this time i would be very interested in the results.

i am planning on building an international campaign with a separate ccTLD for each country, and a proper hreflang tag on each site. although the language will be the same for all - Spanish.

I am hoping and praying that I will not get duplicate content penalty if i have proper hreflang/ccTLD for each country

Interesting. Thx...

I finished my studies on https based on the data from search metrics and launch dates of medium to large sites.

So far the conclusion is that sites will have a small spike in traffic then they will drop in rankings.

This is due to the fact that https costs an extra 10% to 45% in performance page load speed (this is greater for mobile devices on cellular data plans not wifi). The loss in performance is not made up by the ranking boost of implementing https.

Stear clear of this for content sites that do not have any eCommerce on them.

For eCommerce sites it might be worth it as it may increase conversion rates. This has not been tested as I have not found one eCommerce site crazy enough to do the test and share the data.

Cheers, hope this helps someone.