What is hreflang and why does it matter for international SEO?

Hreflang is an HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and country a page targets. Without it, Google may show your English US page to Spanish speakers, or treat your localized pages as duplicate content and suppress them from search results entirely.

What is x-default and do I need it?

The x-default hreflang value specifies the fallback URL for users whose language or region does not match any of your other hreflang tags. Google strongly recommends including x-default in every hreflang implementation to ensure all users land on an appropriate page.

What format should hreflang values use?

Hreflang values use the format "language-REGION" where language is a 2-letter ISO 639-1 code (lowercase) and REGION is an optional 2-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (uppercase). Examples: "en" for English globally, "en-US" for English in the United States, "pt-BR" for Portuguese in Brazil.

Can I use hreflang for the same language in different countries?

Yes, that is one of the primary use cases. For example, "en-US", "en-GB", and "en-AU" target English speakers in the US, UK, and Australia respectively. This is important when content differs by region (pricing, spelling, legal terms) even though the language is the same.

Do hreflang tags need to be reciprocal?

Yes. If page A includes a hreflang tag pointing to page B, then page B must also include a hreflang tag pointing back to page A. Non-reciprocal (one-way) hreflang tags are ignored by Google. Every page in the set must reference all other pages including itself.

Where should hreflang tags be placed?

Hreflang tags can be placed in three locations: in the HTML section as elements, in HTTP response headers (useful for PDFs and non-HTML files), or in your XML sitemap using the xhtml:link element. The HTML method is the most common and easiest to implement.

Free tool

Hreflang Checker

Paste your <link rel='alternate'> tags and validate language + region codes against ISO 639-1 / ISO 3166-1. Catches missing x-default and duplicate codes.

100% free
No sign-up
Clear controls
Open and use

Or paste link tags

1 issue

5 hreflang tags parsed

parsed tags

enhttps://example.com/en/
en-GBhttps://example.com/en-gb/
en-UShttps://example.com/en-us/
hihttps://example.com/hi/
x-defaulthttps://example.com/

issues

⚠Invalid region code: x-default

What this tool does

Validates ISO 639-1 + ISO 3166-1 codes
Detects missing x-default fallback
Catches duplicate hreflang values
Bulk parse all tags at once

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The short version

What is Hreflang Checker?

An hreflang checker validates the hreflang link tags on your website to ensure search engines correctly serve the right language and regional version of your pages to users in different countries.

Hreflang is an HTML attribute used in <link rel='alternate'> tags that tells Google, Yandex, and other search engines about the language and geographic targeting of alternate versions of a page. For example, if you have English, Spanish, and Hindi versions of the same content, hreflang tags prevent Google from treating them as duplicate content and ensure Spanish-speaking users in Mexico see your Spanish page while English-speaking users in the US see your English page. Incorrect hreflang implementation is one of the most common international SEO mistakes -- invalid language codes, missing x-default fallbacks, and duplicate values silently break your multi-language targeting. This tool parses your hreflang tags, validates language codes against ISO 639-1 and region codes against ISO 3166-1, and flags missing x-default tags, duplicate entries, and malformed codes.

Hreflang Checker showing a worked example — Validate language + region codes against ISO 639-1 / ISO 3166-1. — Hreflang Checker with the built-in example loaded. Free, no sign-up, and the result appears as you type.

Step by step

How to use Hreflang Checker

1
Paste your hreflang link tags
Copy all <link rel="alternate" hreflang="..."> tags from your page source and paste them into the editor. You can paste multiple tags at once -- the tool parses all of them in a single pass.
2
Review validation results
The tool instantly checks each tag for valid ISO 639-1 language codes and ISO 3166-1 region codes. Valid tags appear in green; invalid ones in red. A summary shows the total issue count.
3
Fix flagged issues
Address any issues like missing x-default fallback, duplicate hreflang values, or invalid language/region codes. Edit your tags and re-paste to verify the fixes before deploying to your site.

What's inside

Everything this tool
does for you

Validates language codes against the complete ISO 639-1 standard (180+ languages)
Validates region codes against ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (55+ countries)
Detects missing x-default fallback tag that Google recommends for all hreflang implementations
Catches duplicate hreflang values that confuse search engines about which URL to serve
Color-coded tag display -- green for valid, red for invalid -- with extracted href URLs
Bulk parsing of all hreflang tags at once for pages targeting dozens of language-region combinations

Understand the result

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Questions

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