hreflang

hreflang

The hreflang tab includes details of hreflang annotations crawled by the SEO Spider, delivered by HTML link element, HTTP Header or XML Sitemap. The filters show common issues discovered for hreflang.

Hreflang is useful when you have multiple versions of a page for different languages or regions. It tells Google about these different variations and helps them show the most appropriate version of your page by language or region.

Hreflang link elements should be placed in the head of the document and looks like this in HTML:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://www.example.com" >
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://www.example.com/us/" >

‘Store Hreflang‘ and ‘Crawl Hreflang‘ options need to be enabled (under ‘Config > Spider’) for this tab and respective filters to be populated. To extract hreflang annotations from XML Sitemaps during a regular crawl ‘Crawl Linked XML Sitemaps‘ must be selected as well.

Columns

This tab includes the following columns.

• Address – The URL crawled.
• Title 1/2 etc – The page title element of the page.
• Occurrences – The number of hreflang discovered on a page.
• HTML hreflang 1/2 etc – The hreflang language and region code from any HTML link element on the page.
• HTML hreflang 1/2 URL etc – The hreflang URL from any HTML link element on the page.
• HTTP hreflang 1/2 etc – The hreflang language and region code from the HTTP Header.
• HTTP hreflang 1/2 URL etc – The hreflang URL from the HTTP Header.
• Sitemap hreflang 1/2 etc – The hreflang language and region code from the XML Sitemap. Please note, this only populates when crawling the XML Sitemap in list mode.
• Sitemap hreflang 1/2 URL etc – The hreflang URL from the XML Sitemap. Please note, this only populates when crawling the XML Sitemap in list mode.

Filters

This tab includes the following filters.

• Contains Hreflang – These are simply any URLs that have rel=”alternate” hreflang annotations from any implementation, whether link element, HTTP header or XML Sitemap.
• Non-200 Hreflang URLs – These are URLs contained within rel=”alternate” hreflang annotations that do not have a 200 response code, such as URLs blocked by robots.txt, no responses, 3XX (redirects), 4XX (client errors) or 5XX (server errors). Hreflang URLs must be crawlable and indexable and therefore non-200 URLs are treated as errors, and ignored by the search engines. The non-200 hreflang URLs can be seen in the lower window ‘URL Info’ pane with a ‘non-200’ confirmation status. They can be exported in bulk via the ‘Reports > Hreflang > Non-200 Hreflang URLs’ export.
• Unlinked Hreflang URLs – These are pages that contain one or more hreflang URLs that are only discoverable via its rel=”alternate” hreflang link annotations. Hreflang annotations do not pass PageRank like a traditional anchor tag, so this might be a sign of a problem with internal linking, or the URLs contained in the hreflang annotation. To find out exactly which hreflang URLs on these pages are unlinked, use the ‘Reports > Hreflang > Unlinked Hreflang URLs’ export.
• Missing Return Links – These are URLs with missing return links (or ‘return tags’ in Google Search Console) to them, from their alternate pages. Hreflang is reciprocal, so all alternate versions must confirm the relationship. When page X links to page Y using hreflang to specify it as it’s alternate page, page Y must have a return link. No return links means the hreflang annotations may be ignored or not interpreted correctly. The missing return links URLs can be seen in the lower window ‘URL Info’ pane with a ‘missing’ confirmation status. They can be exported in bulk via the ‘Reports > Hreflang > Missing Return Links’ export.
• Inconsistent Language & Region Return Links – This filter includes URLs with inconsistent language and regional return links to them. This is where a return link has a different language or regional value than the URL is referencing itself. The inconsistent language return URLs can be seen in the lower window ‘URL Info’ pane with an ‘Inconsistent’ confirmation status. They can be exported in bulk via the ‘Reports > Hreflang > Inconsistent Language Return Links’ export.
• Non-Canonical Return Links – URLs with non canonical hreflang return links. Hreflang should only include canonical versions of URLs. So this filter picks up return links that go to URLs that are not the canonical versions. The non canonical return URLs can be seen in the lower window ‘URL Info’ pane with a ‘Non Canonical’ confirmation status. They can be exported in bulk via the ‘Reports > Hreflang > Non Canonical Return Links’ export.
• Noindex Return Links – Return links which have a ‘noindex’ meta tag. All pages within a set should be indexable, and hence any return URLs with ‘noindex’ may result in the hreflang relationship being ignored. The noindex return links URLs can be seen in the lower window ‘URL Info’ pane with a ‘noindex’ confirmation status. They can be exported in bulk via the ‘Reports > Hreflang > Noindex Return Links’ export.
• Incorrect Language & Region Codes – This simply verifies the language (in ISO 639-1 format) and optional regional (in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format) code values are valid. Unsupported hreflang values can be viewed in the lower window ‘URL Info’ pane with an ‘invalid’ status.
• Multiple Entries – URLs with multiple entries to a language or regional code. For example, if page X links to page Y and Z using the same ‘en’ hreflang value annotation. This filter will also pick up multiple implementations, for example, if hreflang annotations were discovered as link elements and via HTTP header.
• Missing Self Reference – URLs missing their own self referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang annotation. It was previously a requirement to have a self-referencing hreflang, but Google has updated their guidelines to say this is optional. It is however good practice and often easier to include a self referencing attribute.
• Not Using Canonical – URLs not using the canonical URL on the page, in it’s own hreflang annotation. Hreflang should only include canonical versions of URLs.
• Missing X-Default – URLs missing an X-Default hreflang attribute. This is optional, and not necessarily an error or issue.
• Missing – URLs missing an hreflang attribute completely. These might be valid of course, if they aren’t multiple versions of a page.
• Outside <head> – Pages with an hreflang link element that is outside of the head element in the HTML. The hreflang link element should be within the head element, or search engines will ignore it.

Please note – The SEO Spider has a 500 hreflang annotation limit currently. If you have over this limit, they will not be reported. Over 500 hreflang annotations is unsual and might be on the extreme side for the majority of set-ups.

For more information on hreflang, please read our guide on ‘How to Audit Hreflang‘.