hreflang Check for Multilingual Sites
The declared language versions are extracted and validated, up to eight of them are actually opened to see whether they point back at this page, and the presence of x-default and self-reference is checked.
- No sign-up
- Real reciprocal check
- Language code validation
Run the tool right here
Check a page's language versions and see whether the references are genuinely reciprocal.
- What it costs Free
- Data source Our own server
- Access No sign-up
The short answer
hreflang tells Google that a page has several language versions and which audience each is for, so that a Turkish visitor sees the Turkish version rather than the Persian one. The rule everything hangs on is reciprocity: every version must point at every other version, including itself.
This tool exists because of that word, reciprocal. If the Persian page points at the English version but the English version does not point back, Google treats the whole group as invalid and discards it. That is not just one broken link, it is the entire language set for that page failing. Tools that only list the tags on a page cannot see this, because seeing it requires actually opening the other side.
The second frequent error is a wrong language code. hreflang takes a language and country code, not a country name and not any string you like. Writing fa-IR is correct and fa-Iran is not; writing en for all English speakers is correct and en-UK is wrong, because the country code for the United Kingdom is GB. An invalid code makes Google ignore that one line, and if that line was the only route to a version, that version drops out of the group.
x-default is the part that usually gets left out. It tells Google which version to show when the visitor language matches none of them. Without it Google chooses for itself, and its choice is not necessarily the one you want. For a site whose primary language is Persian, the Persian version is usually the right x-default.
Where the data comes from
Reciprocity is verified by actually opening the other page, not by guessing. We say this from our own experience on this very site: a one-way hreflang makes Google discard the whole cluster, and you get no error in Search Console, just the wrong version showing in results. At most 8 versions are opened so that one run does not fire dozens of requests at your site.
When it helps
When you run a multilingual site and Google shows the wrong version to users, or after launching a new language version. If your site is single-language, this tool is not for you and you need not add anything.
Where it does not help
If your site is monolingual this tool is of no use to you and you do not need to add anything; hreflang on a single-language site is only pointless complexity. Technical limit: at most eight versions are actually opened, so that one run does not send dozens of requests to your site; if you have more than eight languages, the rest are listed but their reciprocity is not checked. A last point that matters: hreflang tells Google which version to show to whom, not which version ranks. If you expect adding hreflang to lift the ranking of your English version, it will not do that.
One thing we learned using it
We say this from experience on this very site: when hreflang is one-way, you see no error in Search Console. No report arrives and no warning is recorded; Google simply starts showing the wrong version in results and you spend months thinking the problem is the content. The only way to see it is to actually open the other side, and that is exactly why we built that check into the tool.
What it costs
This tool runs on our own server and we buy no data for it, so it is free and stays free. It only carries a daily cap so a bot cannot swallow the whole capacity.
The daily cap is counted per visitor. If you need more, a free account raises your limit.
Questions about this tool
Should hreflang go in the head or in the sitemap?
Both are correct and Google reads both. What matters is picking only one; declaring it in both places with different values is the most common way to create a conflict. On a large site the sitemap is usually easier to keep consistent.
Does a page need an hreflang pointing at itself?
Yes. Self-reference is part of the standard and its absence leaves the group incomplete. That is also exactly what this tool checks separately.
What if the translations are not complete?
hreflang is for versions that genuinely are the same content in another language. If your English version is half finished, declaring it does not help Google and may send a visitor to an incomplete page. Finish the translation first, then declare it.