Fix Shopify hreflang serving the wrong language or country in Google after a Markets app conflict
Google is sending shoppers to the wrong version of your store — French visitors landing on the English pages, US buyers getting the EU site — and bounce rates climb 40–60%. It usually starts when a translation app and Shopify Markets both inject hreflang tags, giving Google two contradictory sets of signals. Shopify keeps no version history of your locale or hreflang settings, so once an app overwrites them there's no native way to see what changed or roll it back.
Step by step
Confirm what Google actually sees: open view-source (or GSC URL Inspection > rendered HTML) on a few key pages and read the <link rel="alternate" hreflang="..."> tags in the head. The usual break signs are duplicate tags for the same locale, an x-default pointing at the wrong language, a missing self-reference, or non-reciprocal return-tag errors.
Find which system is writing the tags. Shopify Markets emits hreflang automatically once you have multiple markets/languages live; a translation app (Weglot, Langify, Transcy, T Lab, etc.) can emit a second, conflicting set. Check Settings > Markets (languages, default market, the domain or subfolder per market), your translation app's SEO/hreflang setting, and theme.liquid for any hardcoded alternate tags.
Pick ONE source of truth and switch the other off. For most stores, let Shopify Markets own hreflang and disable the app's hreflang injection (most have a 'let Shopify handle hreflang' toggle), then delete any hardcoded alternate tags in the theme. Verify each market has the correct language + country, the right default/primary language, and that x-default is present and reciprocal.
Re-inspect the rendered tags, then request reindex of the affected URLs in Google Search Console. To stop it recurring, keep a daily snapshot of your SEO fields and your Markets language/locale config — so the next time an app silently rewrites hreflang or flips the default language, you're alerted within the day (with the likely culprit named) and can restore the working setup in one click instead of debugging blind.
Source: Shopify Help Center: selling in multiple languages / Markets & international domains; Google Search Central docs on hreflang and international targeting; Shopify Community international-SEO threads
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