seo-hreflang

Provide a URL and the audit checks self-referencing tags, bidirectional return tags between all language versions, x-default fallback, and language/region code validity. Results are reported in a table showing pass or fail status per language variant with severity ratings.

The most critical errors are missing self-referencing tags and missing return tags, which cause Google to ignore the entire hreflang set. Other frequent issues include invalid codes like `eng` instead of `en` or `en-uk` instead of `en-GB`, and hreflang placed on non-canonical URLs.

HTML link tags suit small sites with fewer than 50 variants, HTTP headers work for non-HTML files like PDFs, and XML sitemaps are recommended for large sites or cross-domain setups. Sitemaps centralize management and avoid bloating the page head.

Yes, hreflang supports cross-domain setups such as example.com and example.de. Both domains must include return tags referencing each other, both should be verified in Google Search Console, and sitemap-based implementation is recommended.

Google ignores hreflang sets with missing return tags, missing self-referencing tags, or tags placed on non-canonical URLs. Mixed HTTP/HTTPS URLs and trailing slash mismatches between hreflang and canonical URLs also cause validation failures.