International SEO
International targeting in Google Search Console
The old International Targeting report and its country setting are gone. International SEO now depends on locale-specific URLs, visible localized content and correct hreflang annotations.
Checked against Google Search Central · October 2026
Current status
The report is retired
Google has deprecated the International Targeting report. Country targeting in Search Console is no longer supported, while Google continues to support and use hreflang. This is confirmed in Google’s official notice.
International Targeting
RetiredThere is no replacement country selector in Search Console.
What changed in Search Console
Two different features disappeared with the old report. Their replacements are not another Search Console screen.
Country targeting was removed
You can no longer choose a target country for a generic domain in Search Console. Google says this country-targeting option is no longer supported.
The hreflang error report disappeared
Search Console no longer provides the old site-wide Language tab. Hreflang itself was not deprecated; only that reporting interface went away.
What to use instead
Google’s current guidance focuses on page and URL signals rather than a manual country switch.
Use separate locale URLs
Give each language or regional version its own crawlable URL, such as /en-gb/ and /en-us/. Do not depend on cookies or browser-language swaps.
Declare alternates with hreflang
Choose HTML tags, HTTP headers or an XML sitemap. Google treats the three methods as equivalent and says there is no Search benefit in maintaining all three.
Keep every cluster reciprocal
Each localized page must list itself and every alternate. If page A points to page B, page B must point back to page A.
Let users switch locale
Provide visible language or region links. Google advises against adapting content solely through IP detection because crawling may miss variants.
HREFLANG
A minimal hreflang cluster
The same set belongs on every version of the page. Use fully qualified URLs and a language code with an optional region code.
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB"
href="https://example.com/en-gb/page/">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US"
href="https://example.com/en-us/page/">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default"
href="https://example.com/page/">Use x-default for a fallback page when no listed language or region is the right match.
How to validate international targeting now
Search Console no longer supplies the old site-wide error list. Validate the implementation at page and crawl level.
Return links
Every alternate points back to every other member of the cluster.
Self-reference
Each page includes its own URL in the hreflang set.
Valid codes
Use ISO 639-1 language codes and optional ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 region codes. A country code by itself is invalid.
Indexable URLs
Alternate URLs resolve successfully, can be crawled and are not blocked from indexing.
Canonical alignment
Each localized page normally canonicalizes to itself rather than collapsing the whole cluster into one locale.
Consistent clusters
HTML, headers or sitemap entries do not disagree about which URLs belong together.
Common search wording
Google Search Console international targeting, Search Console international targeting, Google Search Console country targeting and hreflang Google Search Console now all point to the same answer: the report is retired, but international SEO signals still work.