Check that your hreflang tags actually work: reciprocal links, a valid x-default, and correct language/region codes
| Hreflang | Points to | Code | Reciprocal |
|---|
Hreflang is one piece of international SEO — run a complete audit to check speed, mobile-friendliness, broken links, and more.
Run Free Website Audit
Hreflang tags tell search engines which URL to show for a given language and region, but they're
unusually easy to get wrong in ways that break silently — a language page that links to its
Spanish version, but whose Spanish version doesn't link back, simply won't be treated as a valid
pair by Google, and nothing in your browser will ever show you that. This tool reads every
<link rel="alternate" hreflang> tag on a page, then fetches each URL those tags
point to and checks whether it links back to the original page — the actual test search engines
apply. It also flags a missing x-default fallback, a missing self-referencing tag
(the page should normally list itself among its own alternates), duplicate language codes pointing
to different URLs, and codes that don't match a valid language/region format. It complements the
Broken Link Checker and
Redirect Chain Checker —
neither of those looks at hreflang specifically, and it's one of the most common gaps in
international SEO audits.