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Hey sym_admin, thanks for your response! I'll relay your suggestions to our devs, and I'll certainly be in touch if I have any more questions. Thanks again!

From what I am picking up, you are only offering translations. Be careful not to associate one language with one country when it comes to the major world languages like French and Spanish that are spoken in a number of countries. Therefore I highly recommend removing those flags and bringing a language menu up to the top. I am happy to hear you are changing from ccTLDs to another solution. ccTLDs are only meant for content targeted at one country. If you are doing translations, then Spanish would need multiple ccTLDs (example Mexico and Spain) and then the content would be duplicated across those sites unless something else changed about your offering on those country sites. Anyway, I am babbling. You are headed down the right path. Remove those flags and have a language menu up top.

The reference uses the words "Consider" and "when possible", which is not as clear as other suggestions Google make. Instructions are crystal clear for other on-page techniques, such as hreflang. As a power user who works with clients in multiple languages, I frequently switch between languages using the URL, like going from https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=**en** to https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=**fr**. This wouldn't be possible if the URL was https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/keep-a-simple-url-structure. For this particular use, I would argue the former are more "user-friendly" than the latter! More and more the URL is becoming a relic of the past. Sitename and Breadcrumbs are replacing it in SERPs. Browsers on mobile hide it by default. There is no URL bar in recent in-app browsers (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). On the hand, it has been said in the past that keywords in URLs help search engines understand the context of a link when there is no anchor text. A few things to consider: The need to create 301 redirects and the risk of losing trafic The impact on on-site SEO (hreflang, canonicals, sitemaps, internal links, etc.) The qualitative impact (do your users expect this feature? do visitors expect this feature?) Most importantly, the fact that it's probably a low priority optimization! If at all possible, consider running an experiment. Hope this helps! I left out a clear answer on purpose - because I don't have one.