Can Incorrect Hreflang Tags Hurt SEO? [Video]

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 …