Google Interested In Hreflang Alternatives

Gary Illyes from Google said he has heard from the SEO industry that hreflang can be “annoying” and complex and confusing. So he is open to ideas on how to replace it and make it work for both small and really large websites.

He wrote this on LinkedIn saying, “Things I’ve learned and heard in Sofia at the SERPConf event.” He said one of those is that “hreflang is annoying.”

Gary wrote, “I don’t disagree,” that I guess he understands why SEOs and creators find it annoying.

So he said that he open to new ideas. He wrote, “I’m still very open to coming up with something less annoying, but it needs to work for small sites and mammoths as well, while delivering at least the same amount of information.”

So if you have ideas, let Gary know, he wrote, “Ping if you have ideas.”

You can use hreflang to tell Google about the variations of your content. This helps Google understand the various pages and how they are localized variations of the same content. But the implementation can be confusing and detailed, why he said it can be annoying. Several years ago, John Mueller said hreflang can be the most complex aspect in SEO.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.