Google has announced on Twitter that it has deprecated the International Targeting report in Google Search Console. Google’s international SEO advice has not changed with this but the International Targeting report will no longer work going forward.
The report is going away after September 22, 2022. Google wrote here more about it and Aleyda Solis shared a screenshot of the notice:
Google wrote “The International Targeting report has been deprecated, and will be removed from Search Console soon. We continue to support hreflang and our recommendations for managing multilingual and multiregional sites still stand.”
Google posted those recommendations in their support area here.
The International Targeting report has been deprecated, and will be removed from Search Console soon. We continue to support hreflang and our recommendations for managing multilingual and multiregional sites still stand. https://t.co/yz4lsHhXhO
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 24, 2022
The International Targeting report was to monitor your hreflang errors, or to choose a country that should be prioritized for your search results. This report had sections for the Language section: Monitor the usage and errors of hreflang tags on your site and the Country section: Set a site-wide country target for your entire site, if desired.
This report first launched in 2014 by the way.
Here are some tweets about this:
The International Targeting Report now features a notification saying it won’t be available after Sep 22 👀 https://t.co/cDfEMrVj3E pic.twitter.com/TEmka1trz3
— Aleyda Solis 🇺🇦 (@aleyda) August 24, 2022
There’s no problem with hreflang if you can’t see the problems with hreflang 😉 https://t.co/6hGr0MIZZH pic.twitter.com/oD9ra3XsG9
— Dave Smart (@davewsmart) August 24, 2022
We’re not planning on removing hreflang support from Search. There are good hreflang checkers out there, per page & across sites.
— 🥔 johnmu (personal) updated for 2022 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 24, 2022
TBH I struggled a lot with the hreflang report in Search Console. I think it was a good idea & useful, but the focus on indexed URLs meant that it was more of a “did I do things right a year ago?” rather than a live confirmation. Crawling yourself is much more immediate.
— 🥔 johnmu (personal) updated for 2022 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 24, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
