Google’s Gary Illyes said he’s heard from the SEO industry that hreflang can be “annoying” and complex and confusing. So open to ideas on how to replace it and make it work for both small websites and really big websites.
He wrote this LinkedIn saying, “Things I learned and heard in Sofia at the SERPConf event.” He said one of them is that “hreflang is annoying”.
Gary wrote, “I don’t disagree,” which I guess understands why SEOs and creators find it annoying.
So he said he was open to new ideas. He wrote: “I’m still very open to coming up with something less obtrusive, but it also needs to work for small, mammoth sites, while providing at least the same amount of information.”
So if you have any ideas, let Gary know, he wrote: “Ping if you have any ideas.”
You can use hreflang to tell Google about variations of your content. This helps Google understand different pages and how they are localized variations of the same content. But the implementation can be confusing and detailed, which is why he said it can be annoying. Several years ago, John Mueller said that hreflang may be the most complex aspect of SEO.
Discussion forum a LinkedIn.
