Can we use sharepoint online root site as source variation

Question

Hi we are now working in multi language in SharePoint and we need to set the root site as source instead of its sub site.

I read that in variation we need to set the en-US as main source but in our case it needs to be the global root site because other countries has specific contents.

Below is our structure

company.sharepoint.com <---Root / Global
                      /US  <---Unit States
                      /China  <--- China 
                      /Italy

Any tips on how to achieve this?

Answer 1

No, this is not possible since it would introduce overlap between labels / the navigation hierarchy.

There are many methods to redirect users from different countries to the right site when using variations, you can check this article:

How to redirect users to the right site when using variations?

Answer 2

Variations are build on subsites. You cant make the root itself a variation, since that will be the variation root site. Below will be the different variation labels in the hierarchy.

There is a (fairly old) post by Steffan which explains this in a lot of detail:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/stefan_gossner/2011/11/14/sharepoint-variations-the-complete-guide-part-1-the-basics/