SEO & webmaster
Hreflang Checker
Validate the hreflang tags of your multilingual site in seconds.
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On a multilingual website, hreflang tags tell Google which language version to show each visitor: French to French speakers, German to German speakers, and so on. When they are misconfigured, your own pages start competing against each other, the wrong language shows up in search results, and rankings quietly erode — with no visible symptom on the site itself. This checker extracts every hreflang annotation from a page, validates each language and region code (fr, en-GB, de-CH…), and checks for the x-default value and the self-reference — the two most commonly forgotten requirements. If you run a site in several languages, this two-second test can save weeks of head-scratching. Free, no account needed.
How does it work?
- Paste the address of a page from your multilingual site.
- Click “Analyze” — all hreflang tags are extracted and listed.
- Review any invalid codes and the x-default and self-reference warnings.
- Fix the issues, then test pages from each language to confirm reciprocity.
Frequently asked questions
What is x-default for?
It names the page to serve when no declared language matches the visitor — typically your international version or language selector. Without x-default, Google picks on its own, and not always wisely.
Why must a page reference itself?
Every page must include an hreflang annotation pointing to its own URL, alongside those pointing to the other languages. Google requires it: without the self-reference, the whole annotation set may be ignored.
Which code should I use for Swiss French or British English?
Language code in lowercase ISO 639-1, hyphen, country code in uppercase ISO 3166-1: “fr-CH”, “en-GB”. Watch out for classic traps: “ch” alone means the Chamorro language, not Switzerland, and the United Kingdom is “gb”, not “uk”.
Do hreflang tags need to be reciprocal?
Yes. If the French page points to the English page, the English page must point back to the French one. Without reciprocity, Google ignores the annotations — so test each language version, not just one.