When Is It Too Many Country Versions Of Your Web Pages For Google Search?

You have all seen them, these country/language switcher menus at the top of the page that let you flip the language and region of the page to be more localized to your taste. But when is it all just too much and not going to help you with Google Search?

One SEO asked Google’s John Mueller why Google sometimes the US ranks a page from another country instead of the en-us version? In short, why does Google not follow the right page to be ranked in the right country. John’s response was interesting, he said “Just because you can make country versions, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

He pointed out on Twitter “It looks like it’s the same page, there’s no real reason for us to even index both versions.” So in these cases, the pages have nothing unique or different about them, so why are you giving the option to switch the language? John then said “I’d recommend using fewer versions” since it “looks like you have 78 URLs for the same content” he added.

Colin McDermott shared a snippet of only part of the language/country selector tool from the site, it is much larger than just this:

If your site’s language switcher looks like this… read the below from @JohnMu @rustybrick https://t.co/EwOOZ5k8GS pic.twitter.com/rXEgwdpZTV

— Colin McDermott (@ColinMcDermott) March 25, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.