We use placeholders (external links href=”#”) in our sitemap to group pages together in categories to enable drop-down of them in the site navigation when users hover over the link. This enables us to maintain proper seo structure of the site, i.e. home (tier1) –> sub page (tier2) –> sub sub page (tier3) and group pages together for visual representation to the users in the site navigation. The external link was not seen as a page.

This worked perfectly when our site was monolingual, i.e. the placeholder was ignored in the auto nav and in the sitemap, and the sub pages where displayed correctly below the placeholder name in the site navigation.

We have recently added two extra languages using the Internationalization addon (see screenshots for the site structure).

Unfortunately, the placeholders don't work with the Internationalization addon. Pages that are outside the placeholder are not affected though (see below).

Correct url path when the placeholder is present:
mysite.com/us/sub-page (the placeholder should not be visible)
mysite.com/us/contact-us

mysite.com/de/sub-page
mysite.com/de/contact-us

mysite.com/fr/sub-page
mysite.com/fr/contact-us

The url path is incorrect when the placeholder is present:
mysite.com/sub-page
mysite.com/us/contact-us

mysite.com/sub-page1
mysite.com/de/contact-us

mysite.com/sub-page2
mysite.com/fr/contact-us

The language locale is drop from the path and same sub pages get sequence numbers added to their path.

I need someone to help us to fix this.

Birgir