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Quite an old style of architecture, it's a shame it cannot be changed. Just so others understand a bit more, what you refer to as a 'suffix' is actually called parameters. In a URL, anything following "?" is parameters If the language on the root is dynamic (it changes) then it's very difficult for you to hreflang to it effectively as it will conflict the the parameter URLs (which are language based) AND additionally, you won't know for certain what language to hreflang to. That also makes canonicals to the root quite tricky IMO I think what you are already doing, is the best of a bad situation. At least the parameter-based URLs set a designated language which you can rely on to be the same If you look at this official URL from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en Scroll down until you find the heading "Using locale-specific URLs" and look at the table underneath of that heading Parameter-based geo-targeting, is actually the only one of of multiple architectures, which Google put in red text and explicitly warn people away from. Since the site you are looking at has crossed that red line, you may need to manage expectations about results. If they're going to pick the worst possible format and stick with it, without asking you as a consultant what is best, they've kind of shot themselves in the foot there P.S: Regarding 'actual' redirects, not canonicals. For sites that have proper sub-folder structure, usually you redirect users based on their location, but allow them to flag select to 'escape' the redirections (which can sometimes go wrong). You also usually exempt Google's user-agent ('googlebot') from regional redirects, as they can only crawl from one location at once and otherwise they think areas of your site keep going up and down due to all your redirects. But with your structure, I'm not sure I would even touch redirects. It's in enough of a state as it is without rolling those dice

Google's primary objective is to give users the best experience, off course they do so by crawling the entire web for the most relevant results based on their search queries. Google's Search Console is a free service that provides you with links Google the came across / found in the before mentioned proces. With this in mind, be aware that Google does not crawl the web to give you as a webmaster the most recent en relevant backlink reports. many links in Google's Search Console can therefore be old, non-existing links (even in most recent link reports) Another shortcoming of Search Console in my opinion, is that is show where links are/were FROM, but not where they link TO. I personally think paid services such as MOZ, Majestic en Ahrefs do better jobs at this, because their primary objective is to give webmasters / SEM's the best experience, not searchers.

I found the answer I was after here: http://moz.com/ugc/is-your-website-being-replaced-with-google-plus-local-listings