In the latest episode of Google’s “Search Off The Record” podcast, a member of the Search Relations team suggested that Google may be moving towards automatically detecting language versions of web pages, potentially reducing the need for manual hreflang annotations.
Google’s Stance On Automatic Language Detection
Gary Illyes, a Google analyst, believes that search engines should rely less on annotations like hreflang and more on automatically learned signals.
Illyes stated during the podcast:
“Ultimately, I would want less and less annotations, site annotations, and more automatically learned things.”
He argued that this approach is more reliable than the current system of manual annotations.
Illyes elaborated on the existing capabilities of Google’s systems:
“Almost ten years ago, we could already do that, and this was what, almost ten years ago.”
Illyes emphasized the potential for improvement in this area:
“If, almost ten years ago, we could already do that quite reliably, then why would we not be able to do it now.”