Webmasters: Be On The Lookout For Hreflang Implementation Notifications From Google

There are many reports of Google sending out, in large quantities, notifications to webmasters via the Google Search Console for Incorrect Hreflang Implementations.

John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, confirmed with me on Twitter that Google did send out these notifications yesterday to sites that have implemented their hreflang markup incorrectly.

Hreflang markup is designed for websites that serve users from around the world with content translated or targeted to users in a certain region. Google uses the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” attributes to serve the correct language or regional URL in search results. If you mark up your pages incorrectly, it can confuse Google, and now Google is sending out a large set of those notifications.

Google sent this notification first back in July 2015, but, as I said, there are tons of webmasters who have said they received them for the first time yesterday.

Here is a photo of one notification a webmaster received yesterday:

If you use hreflang on your website, make sure to check your Google Search Console message center.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.