Google Insights: Can Incorrect Hreflang Tags Hurt SEO?

In a recent episode of Google’s Search Off The Record podcast, Gary Illyes, a Google’s Search Relations team member, addressed concerns about incorrect hreflang implementation and its potential impact on SEO.

Hreflang Errors: Less Problematic Than Expected?

During the discussion, Illyes was asked about the consequences of mismatched hreflang annotations and actual page content.

Specifically, he addressed scenarios where a page might be incorrectly labeled as one language while containing content in another.

Illyes stated:

“As far as I remember, I worked on the parsing implementation plus the promotion implementation of hreflang, and back then, it didn’t cause problems.”

However, he also noted that his direct experience with this was from around 2016, adding the following:

“That’s a few years back… since then, we changed so many things that I would have to check whether it causes problems.”

Language Demotion & Country Promotion

Providing further context, Illyes explained Google’s approach to language and country relevance:

“When I spelled out LDCP, I said the language demotion country promotion. So, for example, if someone is searching in German and your page is in English, then you would get a negative demotion in the search results.”

This suggests that while incorrect hreflang implementation might not directly cause problems, the actual language of the content still plays a vital role in search relevance.

Exceptions To Language Matching

Interestingly, Illyes pointed out that there are exceptions to strict language matching:

“It’s less relevant to the query to the person unless you are searching for something like ‘how do you spell banana’… Because then it doesn’t really matter… well no it does… it still matters but… because you’re searching for something in English, so we would think okay you want some page that explains how to spell banana in English, not German.”

What This Means For You

Understanding how Google handles hreflang and language mismatches can help inform international SEO strategies.

While Google’s systems appear to be somewhat forgiving of hreflang errors, the actual language of the content remains a key factor in search relevance.

Here are the top takeaways:

1. While incorrect hreflang implementation may not directly penalize your site, it’s still best practice to ensure your annotations accurately reflect your content.
2. The actual language of your content appears to be more important than hreflang annotations for search relevance.
3. For specific queries, like spelling or language-learning topics, Google may be more flexible in presenting content in various languages.

As Illyes noted, Google’s systems have changed over time. Continue to monitor official Google documentation and announcements for the most up-to-**** best practices in international SEO.

Listen to the full podcast episode below:

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