Google's John Mueller said when it comes to hreflang implementations and translating your pages, it is better to do less than more. He said 140 regions seems like way too much, he said on Twitter "I'd recommend limiting yourself to the number of regions you have unique, human-written, high-quality content for. Less is more."
Someone asked if he gets 10 errors from 140 hreflang groups is that a bad thing for the other 130. John said no, each hreflang implementation is standalone but he said "140 regions is almost certainly way too much." It is best to limit yourself to regions where you have "unique, human-written, high-quality content for."
This is the case of where "less is more" he added.
Here are those tweets:
No. Hreflang is kept on a per-pair basis, so if some pairs aren't useful, the rest can still work. That said, 140 regions is almost certainly way too much.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 19, 2020
Say if you have 1 piece of content with EN/DE/FR/IT versions referenced by hreflang, if the FR page goes 404, the others will still be valid & linked by hreflang. 1 error doesn't invalidate the group.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 20, 2020
I'd recommend limiting yourself to the number of regions you have unique, human-written, high-quality content for. Less is more.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 20, 2020
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Where do you start?
I bet some of this (which pages need hreflang) could be determined by reviewing the SC performance report by country/language. My hunch is most people do much more than they need. How do you pick them?
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 20, 2020
