Question 1

What are hreflang tags?

Accepted Answer

Hreflang tags are link elements in a page head (or HTTP headers, or an XML sitemap) that tell Google which language and country each version of a page is for. A page with English, German and French versions carries one tag per version, like hreflang="de" for the German URL, on every version of the page. Used correctly, they stop the wrong-language page ranking in the wrong country and reduce duplicate-content confusion between near-identical regional pages, such as US and UK English.

Question 2

What is the x-default hreflang value?

Accepted Answer

x-default is a special hreflang value for the fallback page: the version shown to visitors whose language and country match none of your targeted versions, often a language selector page or your main international homepage. It is not tied to any language, and every hreflang set should include one. Without it, Google has to guess what to show unmatched visitors.

Question 3

Do hreflang tags have to appear on every version of the page?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this is the mistake that breaks most hreflang setups. The annotations must be reciprocal: if the English page points to the German page, the German page must point back to the English one, and each page must also list itself. If one page in the set is missing the tags or misses a return entry, Google may ignore the whole cluster. Generate one complete tag set and paste the identical block into every version.

Question 4

What is the correct hreflang code format?

Accepted Answer

The format is a language code, optionally followed by a country code: en, en-US, en-GB, de, pt-BR. Language codes come from ISO 639-1 and country codes from ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. Two classic errors are inventing codes like en-UK (the country code for the United Kingdom is GB) and using a language where a country belongs. Script variants such as zh-Hans and zh-Hant also exist for Chinese. The checker in this tool validates your codes against the ISO lists.

Question 5

What is the difference between hreflang and the html lang attribute?

Accepted Answer

The lang attribute on the html element declares the language of that single page, mainly for browsers, screen readers and translation tools. Hreflang is an SEO signal that maps a whole set of alternate pages to languages and regions. They answer different questions, a multilingual site needs both, and neither replaces the other.

Question 6

Why is Google ignoring my hreflang tags?

Accepted Answer

The usual causes are all covered by this checker: a broken return link (one version not pointing back), invalid language or country codes, relative instead of absolute URLs, two tags claiming the same language-country pair with different URLs, or pointing hreflang at URLs that redirect, error or are blocked by noindex. Fix the set so every tag is absolute, valid and reciprocal, then give Google time to recrawl all versions.

Hreflang Generator & Checker

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Generate hreflang tags

Check existing hreflang tags

How to use the Hreflang Generator & Checker

List your page versions

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Add it to every version

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About the Hreflang Generator & Checker