The question came up on Twitter, and John Mueller from Google confirmed that Google treats each hreflang application the same, regardless of whether it is in HTML or added in a sitemap.
Someone else then made a comment that it seems one way of adding hreflang – via HTML – is processed faster than hreflang in sitemaps. But Mueller debunked this.
Instead, it seems that as long as your CMS is pinging with sitemap changes, Google should pick up hreflang in sitemaps just as quickly.
As for the recommended way to implement hreflang, Google does recommend sitemaps. This is because it is easier to update changes, and it reduces the changes of implementation failure when adding the annotations into the HTML of a page.
But either method works, and Google doesn’t treat them differently depending on which way you implement it, so use the implementation that works best for you.
Jennifer Slegg
Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)
- 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
- Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
- Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
- New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
- Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020