Message from webmaster tools regarding incorrect rel-alternate tags

[tavenger5]

Dear webmaster,

We have noticed that on a number of the pages on your site the rel-alternate-hreflang implementation is incorrect. For example:

In particular, there seems to be a problem with missing or incorrect bi-directional linking (when page A links with hreflang to page B, there must be a link back from B to A as well). When our algorithms detect conflicting signals like on these pages, they may make indexing and ranking decisions that do not match what you intended.

To learn more about rel-alternate-hreflang, see the following Help Center article: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please visit our Help Forum:

Google Groups

Sincerely,
The Google Search Quality Team

This is no doubt because the translated URL is not being included in the tags. Can an option be added to just turn off translation of URL's? I believe this would solve a lot of problems I'm having.

[vBET]

This is not about translation of URLs. This is only about hreflang in alternate link and you can simply turn it off by Admin CP -> vBET -> Translation Options -> Add Alternate tag

Also please note that disabling translation of URL will have bad impact on your SEO (lack of translated keywords in URL), so it is advised to not do this. If you still want, then it is enough to not integrate with vBSEO if your links are generated by vBSEO (some bad things can happen - this is not advised and not tested). And in case of native Friendly URL it is enough to disable some hooks (same thing, we will not give details now, only when needed).

Also Marcin will check how alternate are generated right now. We made changes before and now for guests URLs under flags are already generated translated, so no redirection happens (for logged users it do not have sense and it is better for performance to just redirect if ever language switch will happen for such user). But maybe we forgot about alternate. We will check it on our side. Right now it is simplest for you to just disable.

[Marcin Kalak]

Please provide links to sites where alternative tags do not agree among themselves.

[tavenger5]

I never did get URL's to translate properly in the flag links. Here is a page where this is happening: Galaxy Note 3: Disable "My Magazine"?

[Marcin Kalak]

OK, we are working on this issue.

[tavenger5]

FYI, I updated to the latest version, hooked up yandex, and I still cannot get flag and/or re-alternate links translated. My caches are all turned on and guest cache is set to timeout in 3600 seconds.

Here's an example of a page that has been translated, but the flag links/alternate tag links are not linked as translated URL's:
How-to: ******* Galaxy S4 Mini: Transferring Contacts from an ****** to the SGS4 Mini

Spanish page links to
[url=http://cellphoneforums.net/es/*******-galaxy/t365916-*******-galaxy-s4-mini-transferring-contacts-******-sgs4-mini.html](Espa

[tavenger5]

alright, you guys really need to do something about your word filters...

[tavenger5]

example using the linked page above:

Galaxy Note 3: Disable "My Magazine"?

linked Spanish page:
[url=http://cellphoneforums.net/es/*******-galaxy/t365731-galaxy-note-3-disable-my-magazine.html](Espa

[Marcin Kalak]

Do you have enabled Use database cache and disable cleaning cache in AdminCP -> vBET Cache -> Database Cache?

[tavenger5]

Do you have enabled Use database cache and disable cleaning cache in AdminCP -> vBET Cache -> Database Cache?

Yes and yes