SEO
How does Google handle hreflang? A case study
But at the same time, the hreflang, in Google's own words , “one of the most complex aspects of SEO (if not the most complex one)”. Does everything therefore always go entirely to plan? And does it go completely wrong if you do not configure it? We investigate.
Case: 25 international domains
In their own guidelines , Google recommends explicitly identifying the language and target audience of your web pages in hreflang, to be certain. You might therefore expect the search engine to take a correctly configured hreflang tag into account in 100% of cases. Is that true? And what happens if, as a multilingual website, you do not add hreflang to your domains?
To investigate this, we selected 25 large websites from various industries that operate in multiple countries. We focus on the search results in the Germany region and analyse the proportions within the search data over the course of 30 days for 8.000 German search terms for which these websites are indexed.
We examine the data from 2 angles:
1. Which regional extensions and subdomains do we encounter in the German search results over the course of 30 days?
2. Which of the regional extensions or subdomains was dominant at keyword level? In other words, which version of the website performs best (based on total presence and average position) when more than 1 extension ranks for a keyword?
For this study, we consider it successful when, in ≥90% of the time or cases, the German extension or subdomain of the website was shown by Google.
Internationally in Google: the initial findings
From angle 1, we found no case without noise. For each of the 25 international websites, one or more domains intended for other countries also appeared alongside the German .de domain, to a greater or lesser extent. In many cases, however, things went quite well: in 17 of the 25 cases, the German website was indexed in 90-99% of the snapshots.
If we look at the data from perspective 2, Google is actually doing quite well. For 23 of the 25 websites, the .de domain emerged as the clear, and justified, winner in the search results, amounting to a successrate of around 92%.
Hreflang in figures
Time to see how these results relate to hreflang. On closer inspection, 15 of the 25 international websites had a hreflang tag configured, 60%. For these websites with hreflang, things went largely well in 100% of the cases: the German extension was the dominant search result in 90% or more cases.Good job, Google.
All the figures at a glance:
|
German extension dominant 92% (23/25) |
Hreflang ingesteld
65% (15/23) |
|
No hreflang 35% (8/23) |
|
|
German extension not dominant 8% (2/25) |
Hreflang configured 0% (0/2) |
|
No hreflang 100% (2/2) |
Deviating cases
For a number of websites, however, the results were surprisingly mixed. Recipe platform Cookidoo was visible in Germany with Cookidoo.de in only 35% of the cases. The remaining time, no fewer than 13 other versions of the website appeared, including the Polish, English, Turkish and Austrian Cookidoo.
Looking at angle 2, Cookidoo.de beats the other languages and versions in a meagre 51% of cases, but there are still quite a few keywords for which Cookidoo.pl, Cookidoo.com.tr, Cookidoo.co.uk and so on have the upper hand. What is going on here?
Recipe competitor Gutekueche is also a case apart. On this website, Gutekueche.de was only 20% of the cases more prominent than the .de domains of the neighbouring countries Austria and Switzerland. The real winner here was Gutekueche.at, which performed better in the German SERP for no fewer than 74% of the keywords.
Are recipe websites simply tricky for Google, or is there more to it?
Gutekueche
The very first check we naturally carry out is whether Gutekueche has hreflang configured. It turns out that it does not, making it much more understandable that the search engine struggles to distinguish and assign 3 websites in the same language. Without a hreflang attribute telling Google which German-language domain should be shown in which region, the search engine relies on other on-page and off-page signals for its assessment.
We decide to take a look at Gutenkueche ourselves, and when entering a query in the search bar, it immediately becomes apparent that Google's own search suggestions also favour Gutekueche.at, at least in the Netherlands:
A chicken-and-egg situation? If we look at the search volumes in Germany for both versions of the website, we see the same pattern in any case. Variants of the keyword ‘gutekueche.at’ have more search volume than variants of ‘gutekueche.de’:
Could it be that the Austrian version of Gutekueche has existed for longer and that this ‘OG’ is therefore better known among the German public? The data does not indicate this, in any case, as we find a first mention in 2001 in the internet archive for both .de and .at. In our experience, search interest does play a role in Google's assessment of a website, so it is possible that the higher search volume for Gutekueche.at contributes as a ranking factor.
A quick SEO check reveals little. The look and feel of both websites is similar, and they both perform excellently in terms of Core Web Vitals. At the same time, the website structure and meta content do not appear to be optimal in either case, so the difference in visibility for Gutekueche is unlikely to lie there.
Another ranking factor that can carry significant weight is domain authority: the relative strength of the backlink profile. Gutekueche.at turns out to have a higher DR of 71, compared with Gutekueche.de with a DR of 60. In Google's terms: .at receives considerably more external validation of its quality and reliability than .de does.
It appears that this combination of greater search interest and higher authority is sufficient reason for Google to give the Austrian domain priority among the German public, in the absence of guidance in the hreflang.
Cookidoo
Like the other recipe website, Cookidoo also turns out not to have hreflang configured, as might be expected from this result. As with Gutekueche, something goes ‘wrong’ for this website in the international search results, but in a different way.
What is striking here is that Google is not confused between extensions in the same language, but between regions that have little in common: in particular, Cookidoo Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and Turkey are often dominant in the search results. This calls for closer inspection.
A logical explanation would be that, in cases where Google favours a non-German extension, the recipe in question does not appear on the German extension itself, meaning that the search engine has to look elsewhere. Another explanation could be that these cases involve an ambiguous keyword; a keyword that does not obviously sound German, for example Polish, Turkish or even Italian dishes. Neither explanation appears to hold (consistently) when checked.
Domain authority does not appear to be a decisive factor for Cookidoo either, as Cookidoo.de has the highest DR of all the competing extensions. The same applies to search volumes: in Germany, variants of ‘cookidoo.de’ are searched for by far the most often.
To answer that, we take a closer look at the search results. Do we see any notable differences between the German, Polish, English and Turkish Cookidoo results? Not really, and that is precisely where the problem lies. Cookidoo does not seem to consider translating its recipes a major priority: there is little congruence between the language of the meta content and ingredients list (the recipes themselves are behind a paywall) and the region of the extension. We understand that this makes things difficult for Google without hreflang.
To hreflang, or not to hreflang?
The cautious conclusions we can draw from this little study:
1. Setting up hreflang is effective: for 100% of the websites in our case that had a hreflang tag in place, things went predominantly well in the search results.
2. At the same time, not setting up hreflang is almost equally effective. Even without giving Google additional guidance through hreflang, things still go as you would hope in 80% of the 25 examples.
3. Do you own an international website and have not yet set up hreflang, but do you consider it important for the right region to reach the right target audience? Perhaps you should reconsider that choice if you recognise yourself in at least 1 of the points below:
- You run a recipe platform;
- You have not taken the trouble to translate your websites’ content into the correct language;
- One of your domains is clearly more popular, better known or otherwise more authoritative than the rest.
Google does not always do what it says, but in the case of hreflang, we can say that our favourite search engine is functioning as it should. Scientifically significant? No. Nice to know? We think so. A noteworthy fact for the next SEO drinks event? Absolutely!
Need help with hreflang?
Our specialists can certainly help with that, and the same applies to all your other search-related questions. Feel free to request a sparring session, we would be happy to take a look with you.
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