Hreflang Checker - Audit Your Multilingual Setup
The Hreflang Checker analyzes your site's hreflang markup and language structure with the Türksemveri core: how many language and country alternates are declared, whether the self-reference and x-default rules are met, whether the language codes are valid, and whether the html lang attribute is right. A badly built multilingual setup gets the wrong page listed in the right country, and international traffic quietly drains away.
What Is Hreflang, and Why Does It Matter?
Hreflang is the markup that tells search engines which page of a multilingual or multi-country site belongs to which language and region. It's how Google knows to show a German user the German version and a British user the en-GB one. When hreflang is missing or wrong, Google guesses between your versions: a French user can land on the English page, two language versions can be read as copies of each other, and click-through rates fall.
Google's Three Rules: Self-Reference, Valid Codes, x-default
First, every page must list ITSELF in its hreflang set. Forgetting the self-reference is the most common mistake, and it can invalidate the entire set. Second, language codes must follow ISO 639-1: tr, de, en-GB and fr-CA are valid; "uk", often written for the United Kingdom, is not. Third, the x-default alternate names the fallback version for every user you don't target. One more rule applies across the whole network: reciprocity. If page A lists B, then B must list A; one-way declarations are ignored.
Language or Country? Regional Variants of the Same Language
Hreflang can target language plus country, not just language, and that's where its real power lies. English isn't one market: en-GB and en-US differ in spelling, currency and search habits. The same goes for de-DE versus de-CH (Swiss German) and fr-FR versus fr-CA (Canadian French). If you serve the whole world from a single English page, use plain "en" in your hreflang; if you have country versions, declare each one with its own region code.
Hreflang Alone Isn't Enough: Structure and Localization
Hreflang completes multilingual SEO; it doesn't rescue it. The structural decision comes first: country domain (example.de), subdirectory (example.com/de/) or subdomain (de.example.com). Then content gets localized rather than translated: keyword research is redone in the target language, and currency and trust blocks are rebuilt per country. Hreflang simply hands Google the map of that correctly built structure. Our full approach to international SEO is on our International SEO page.
Your Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do hreflang tags go?
Any one of three places works: link rel="alternate" hreflang tags in the page head, HTTP headers (for non-HTML files such as PDFs), or the XML sitemap. Head tags are the most common and the easiest to manage, and they are what this tool reads.
What does x-default do, and is it required?
x-default names the version shown to users who match none of the languages or regions in your set; it usually points at a language selector or your broadest version (often English). It isn't mandatory, but Google recommends it, and this test flags its absence as a warning.
Does hreflang improve rankings?
No; hreflang is a matching signal, not a ranking signal. It makes sure the CORRECT language or country version of the page that already ranks is the one shown. The gain is indirect: when the right user lands on the right page, click-through and engagement improve, and the duplicate-content risk disappears.
What is a return-tag (reciprocity) error?
If page A points to B via hreflang but B doesn't point back to A, that's a reciprocity error, and Google ignores one-way declarations. This test audits a single page's set; because reciprocity requires crawling every version, test each language version separately and confirm the sets mirror each other.