Why does Google show our US website to customers in Australia?

The short answer

Hreflang tells Google which version suits which reader. It doesn't make two identical pages different. Most sites we audited had set their tags up correctly. Fewer had given each country's version a reason to exist beyond its URL.

What we found

The hreflang mistakes we did find

One in five sites had at least one fault. They were small, specific and easy to fix.

• Codes Google ignores. 4 sites used codes such as en-UK, a region number or a made-up region. Google supports only ISO language codes plus ISO country codes, so British English is en-GB, and it says EU, UN and UK have no effect.
• Alternates that redirect. 6 sites listed a version that redirected elsewhere, 2 of them straight to the homepage. Google needs the listed address to be the page itself.
• No return link. 6 sites had a version that didn't link back. Google's rule is direct: if two pages don't point to each other, the tags are ignored.
• A canonical pointing elsewhere. 4 sites had a version whose canonical tag named a different country's page. That tells Google the Australian page is a copy of the US one, which works against the hreflang.

Coverage was better than we expected: 81% of the inner pages we sampled carried hreflang too, so most sites hadn't set it up on the homepage alone.

The bigger issue: the same page at a different address

On 28 sites with several English versions, we compared the homepages for each country. The median pair shared 67% of their wording. 8 sites were at 90% or more, and 4 were identical apart from the address.

Google says it decides which pages are duplicates based on how similar their content is, and that it prefers URLs that are part of an hreflang cluster when choosing a canonical. When the UK, US and Australian pages say exactly the same thing, the tags can only do so much. A version needs facts that are true for its market: prices in the local currency, delivery and returns, tax, contact details, product availability and the words local buyers use.

Currency is a quick test. Of the 12 Australian English versions we fetched, 7 mentioned Australian dollars anywhere on the page. Of 12 British English versions, 6 mentioned pounds. Not every homepage shows prices, so this is a pointer rather than a measurement, but if your country page can't name your country's price, it isn't yet a different page.

Not every site puts hreflang in the page

Google accepts hreflang in three places: the page, the HTTP header or the XML sitemap. A separate hand check showed why that matters for audits. A global furniture retailer's country homepages had no hreflang in their HTML at all, which a page-only audit would flag as missing. Its sitemaps carried a full set for every country, each linking back correctly.

Before telling anyone their hreflang is missing, check all three places. In our own data, sitemaps added only 7 sites to the 102 that used page tags, so it's uncommon, but it's exactly the case that produces confident wrong advice.

How to diagnose a wrong-country result

• Record the search, the country, the language, the device, the date and the page shown. Reproduce it before changing anything.
• Map the exact twin pages. Don't point every regional product at a country homepage when there's no real equivalent.
• Check each twin: it loads without redirecting, names itself as the canonical, lists the other versions, and is listed back by them.
• Use valid codes: en-GB, en-US, en-AU. Add an x-default for everyone else if you have a sensible fallback.
• Read each version as a local buyer would: currency, delivery, tax, support and availability. If it says nothing local, make it say something.
• Use Search Console's URL Inspection to see which canonical Google chose. Filter the Performance report by country to see which page earns impressions where.
• Let people choose their country with links between versions. Google advises against redirecting visitors by guessed language, which can stop people and search engines from seeing every version.

What AI tools said when we asked

We asked Perplexity and Gemini our question word for word on 24 October. Perplexity gave a sound list of checks and cited two of Google's own pages among ten sources. Gemini covered hreflang and local facts, but sent readers to the Performance report to find a duplicate-canonical problem, when URL Inspection is the tool that shows it, and described the canonical tag as an instruction Google always follows, when Google treats it as a strong signal. It cited a single agency blog. ChatGPT blocked our logged-out session, so it wasn't tested.

If you're relying on an AI answer to fix this, check its steps against Google's documentation. The difference between a signal and an instruction matters here.

How we checked

Every business website from our October studies, not a sample chosen for this question. That's 1,177 domains across clinics, real estate, restaurants, schools, SaaS, design agencies, online shops, dental practices, manufacturers and service businesses, of which 1,061 answered. For each, we read the homepage's hreflang from HTML and HTTP headers, and for the rest we checked their XML sitemaps. For the 102 with page-level hreflang, we validated every code, checked self-reference and x-default, fetched up to ten alternates without following redirects, read their return links and canonicals, checked one inner page, and compared English versions' homepage wording. A separate hand check on 24 October looked at four international brands' country homepages.

Limits

• We tested from one location, so we couldn't see redirects that depend on where a visitor is.
• We checked the signals, not Google's results. We didn't observe which page Google showed in each country.
• The currency figures come from 24 pages and are a pointer, not a measurement.
• The sample is businesses that appeared in our studies, not a random set of international websites.