Hreflang checker
Check the hreflang set on a page for the mistakes that void it.
Free and no signup. This one fetches the URL from our server; nothing about it is stored.
This one fetches the page from our server, so unlike the rest of these tools the URL does leave your browser. Nothing about it is stored.
About this tool
Hreflang has one rule people trip over constantly: every page in a set must reference itself as well as the others. Miss the self-reference and search engines discard the whole set rather than the one tag, so a carefully built multi-language configuration silently does nothing.
- The self-reference is checked first, because its absence voids everything else on the page.
- Duplicate locales make the set ambiguous, and ambiguous sets are ignored rather than guessed at.
- x-default names the page to serve when no locale matches. It is optional and almost always worth having.
- This checks one page. A full audit means confirming every page in the set points back at every other, which needs all of them.
Questions
- Does hreflang need to be self-referencing?
- Yes, and it is the rule most often broken. A page must list itself alongside its alternates or search engines discard the entire set.
- What is x-default for?
- It names the fallback page for visitors whose language and region match none of your alternates — usually a language selector or your primary market.
- Do hreflang tags have to be reciprocal?
- Yes. If A points at B, B must point back at A. One-way references are ignored, which is why a partial rollout produces no benefit at all.