Staying well-informed is required in SEO for best practices. Gary Illyes from Google’s Search Relations team lately revealed some valuable information on the topic of hreflang tags and their impact on SEO. One of the key points that he addressed was the potential impact of mismatched hreflang annotations. He pointed out to a page that is labeled as one language contains content in another language. He said that earlier such mismatches didn’t cause problems. But Google’s systems have undergone numerous changes over the time and now indicate that current practices might differ.
Illyes simultaneously elaborated on the approach of Google to language and country relevance. It introduced the concept of Language Demotion Country Promotion (LDCP). If someone is searching in German and the page is in English, the page may face a negative demotion in the search results. He said that hreflang errors might not penalize the site directly, but the actual language of the content plays a crucial role in search relevance. Incorrect language signals can lead to a lower ranking for queries in mismatched languages.
There are some exceptions though. Strict language matching is less critical. Illyes illustrated with an example. A query like “how do you spell banana” might be more flexible because the language of the content can still be relevant regardless of the hreflang tag.
Understanding how Google handles hreflang and language mismatches can help in informing international SEO strategies. Google’s systems seems to be forgiving of hreflang errors now but the actual language of the content remains a key factor in search relevance. Ensuring that the hreflang annotations accurately reflect the content is best practice.
