Hreflang Checker

Hreflang annotations tell Google and Yandex which language and country each version of a page is meant for, so a searcher in Lahore sees the Urdu page and a searcher in Manchester sees the British English one. They are also one of the easiest SEO signals to get wrong, because a correct set depends on every page in the group agreeing: each page must list every alternate, include itself, use exactly the right codes and, ideally, name a fallback with x-default. One mistake on one page breaks the pair silently; nothing fails visibly, the wrong version simply keeps ranking.

This checker fetches the page, collects the hreflang entries from <link rel="alternate"> tags and from the HTTP Link header, and validates each code against the ISO language, script and region formats Google accepts, with specific messages for the common slips such as en-UK, underscores instead of hyphens or three-letter language codes. It then checks for a self-reference and x-default and fetches up to twenty of the alternates to confirm each one links back to the page you entered, which is the return-tag rule that most hreflang errors in Search Console come from.

The verdict ranks the problems: invalid codes and missing return links are failures, a missing self-reference or x-default is a warning, and a clean set passes. Fix the page, then run the same check from one of the alternates to confirm the set from the other side.