Server-Side Rendering on Country Subdomains: What We Got Wrong First

24ad.info is a classifieds site where every country has its own subdomain — pl.24ad.info , de.24ad.info , gb.24ad.info — all served by one app. The frontend is a React 19 single-page app built with Vite, running on Express behind Caddy, with everything behind Cloudflare.

A single-page app has a well-known weakness: the first HTML a visitor (or a search engine) receives is mostly empty. Getting real content and correct metadata into that first response, per country , took a few rounds. Here they are, including the one we rolled back the same day.

Round 1 (April): canonical URLs and the geo-redirect

The first problems were about which URL counts as "the" page.

Canonical URLs always pointed at the main domain. A category page on pl.24ad.info told search engines its canonical address was the home page of 24ad.info .…