Google’s Gary Illyes explained that hreflang alternate URLs do not get indexed on their own. Instead, they become what he called alternate names, pointers that lead back to whichever URL Google already chose as canonical.
He offered the clarification after Faiez Javaid asked on LinkedIn how Google can surface different language versions of a page in results if Search Console marks those URLs as not indexed. Illyes said the same mechanism explains why site: searches sometimes surface redirecting URLs: those are alternate names too, not independently indexed pages.
A hreflang URL absent from a coverage report is not necessarily broken. It may simply be mapped correctly to the canonical version Google already indexed, and Google can still serve it when a query calls for that language variant.
International SEOs tracking hreflang health in Search Console should stop treating “not indexed” hreflang alternates as failures and instead confirm the mapping points to the right canonical.
Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz reported the exchange on August 10, 2026.
