Geotargeting in Google Search Console
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Google Search Console previously included an International Targeting report that let you associate a subdomain or subdirectory property with a specific country. That feature was deprecated in September 2022 and is no longer available.
What did Google remove and why?
By September 2022, Google had withdrawn access to the International Targeting report from Search Console. In the official deprecation notice, Google stated that the ability to target search results to specific countries using Search Console country targeting “was determined to have little value for the ecosystem, and is no longer supported.”
The removal covered two functions that had previously sat in the same report:
- Country targeting: a setting that let you explicitly associate a subdomain or subdirectory property with a specific country.
- Hreflang error monitoring: a language tab that surfaced hreflang implementation errors detected during crawl, including missing return tags and alternate pages returning errors.
Both are now gone. There is no replacement tool in Search Console that replicates either function.
What geotargeting signals remain?
Although the Search Console setting no longer exists, Google still uses geo-signals when determining which version of content to serve to users in a given country. These have always been the stronger signals, and nothing about how Google processes them has changed.
ccTLDs: country-code top-level domains (.co.uk, .de, .fr) carry automatic geo-association. Google treats a ccTLD as a strong signal that content targets the associated country. This requires no configuration in Search Console and was unaffected by the deprecation.
Hreflang: the primary signal for telling Google which language and regional version of a page should be served to which audience. Hreflang operates at the individual page level and maps equivalent versions across markets. With the Search Console tool gone, correct hreflang implementation is more important than ever, since there is no longer a separate UI to supplement it.
URL structure: subdirectories (example.com/de/) and subdomains (de.example.com) remain meaningful geo-signals when used consistently alongside hreflang.
Content and inbound links: the language of the content, the country origin of inbound links, and server location all continue to contribute as secondary signals.
How do you monitor hreflang errors without the report?
The hreflang error monitor in the old International Targeting report was the most commonly used part of the tool. Without it, the options for identifying hreflang problems at scale are:
Search Console coverage and indexing reports: hreflang errors that prevent pages from being indexed may surface here, but the report is not hreflang-specific.
Google Search Console API: can be queried for indexing status across large property sets, though it does not expose hreflang validation directly.
Third-party crawlers: tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and Ahrefs Site Audit include dedicated hreflang audits. These now fill the gap left by the removed report and are generally more thorough, since they crawl the full hreflang graph rather than relying on what Google has already discovered.
Manual inspection: checking <head> output and XML sitemaps directly, particularly after template changes that affect page-level markup.
How do you monitor international performance by country?
The Performance report in Search Console still allows country-level filtering, and this was not affected by the deprecation.
- Open the Performance report.
- Click + New and select Country.
- Add target countries as separate filters to compare markets.
Sudden drops in visibility for a specific country can indicate a hreflang error affecting that region, a server-side issue, or a ranking shift. Exporting and tracking this data over time gives a clearer view than spot-checking the UI.
What to do if you previously relied on the country targeting setting
If you had country targeting configured in Search Console before the deprecation, that setting no longer exists or has any effect. Google’s guidance is to rely on hreflang, URL structure, content language, and ccTLDs as the signals that communicate geo-intent.
For sites using generic TLDs (.com, .co, .io) across multiple markets, the practical change is to ensure hreflang is correctly implemented and that each market version has a consistent URL structure. The country targeting setting was at best a supporting hint alongside these signals. Google’s decision to remove it reflects the view that it was not contributing meaningfully.
Frequently asked questions
Does removing the country targeting setting affect existing rankings?
Google’s position is that the setting had little effect on search results, so its removal should not cause ranking changes for sites with otherwise correct international setups. If you see unexpected country-level shifts after 2022, the cause is more likely a hreflang or crawling issue than the deprecation itself.
Is there any way to set country targeting in Search Console now?
No. The setting was removed and has not been replaced. The alternatives are the geo-signals described above: ccTLDs, hreflang, URL structure, and content language.
How do I check for hreflang errors now?
Use a third-party crawler with hreflang audit support. Screaming Frog and Sitebulb both map hreflang relationships across a site and flag common errors such as missing return tags and broken alternate URLs.