Google spokesperson John Mueller was asked on Twitter if the site should expect negative repercussions from linking between language or regional versions of pages. Mueller replied that it was even difficult for him to think of a reason why this practice could be perceived negatively.
According to him, links between regional versions can only be useful:
“I can’t think of any reason why cross-references to language/region versions of a site could have a negative effect. It just makes things a lot easier for both users and search engines.”
The issue of relinking regional/language versions of Internet pages was considered in 2014 by Matt Cutts, then head of the Google anti-spam team, says SearchEngines. He stated that the search engine does not consider such links as purchased or “unnatural”.
The only thing that can alert search robots is the presence of a large number of such links in the footer of the site pages, notes NIX Solutions. Also, Google may negatively evaluate the mass placement of links to site mirrors, if they use the same language and region settings. The search engine treats such resources with suspicion.