What is an hreflang checker?

An hreflang checker is a tool that scans a site's pages and validates every hreflang tag: whether it has a matching return tag, whether the target URL is live and indexable, and whether the language-region code is valid. It catches errors that don't cause visible problems on the site itself but stop Google from showing the right language version to the right searchers.

What happens if hreflang tags are wrong?

Google either ignores the affected hreflang pair or, in the worst case, treats the whole cluster as unreliable and falls back to choosing one version to rank. That usually means the wrong language or country version shows up in search results, or two versions of the same content end up competing against each other instead of each ranking in its own market.

What's the difference between hreflang and canonical?

Canonical tells Google which URL is the master version when several URLs contain the same or very similar content, and hreflang tells Google which URL to serve for a given language and region among URLs that are meant to be different local versions of the same content. When the two conflict, for example a canonical pointing away from a page's own hreflang self-reference, Google trusts the canonical and the hreflang instruction is effectively overridden.

Does Deltio alert me if hreflang tags change?

Yes. Deltio's SEO scanner checks hreflang on every monitored URL and compares each scan to the previous one, so it flags exactly when a tag went missing, became invalid, or started pointing to a broken URL. Alerts arrive by email or Slack, in your language and timezone.

How do I check hreflang manually?

Open the page's raw HTML with view-source or a browser extension, find the hreflang tags in the head, and check each linked URL individually: does it return 200, is it indexable, and does it link back to the page you started from. It works for a single page but doesn't scale once you're checking multiple language versions across a portfolio of client sites.

How much does Deltio cost?

Deltio starts at £24 a month on the Starter plan, or £20 a month if you pay annually. Professional is £49 a month and Enterprise is £119 a month. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial.

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Hreflang Checker: Find and Fix Broken Tags

A hreflang checker scans every URL on a site and confirms that each hreflang tag has a matching return tag on the target page, points to a live indexable URL, and uses a valid language-region code. Get any of that wrong and Google either ignores the whole hreflang set-up or serves the wrong language version in search results, which costs you the ranking you built for that market. Deltio's SEO scanner checks hreflang on every URL alongside title tags, meta descriptions and canonicals, and flags it the moment something changes between two scans. Plans start at £20 a month, with a 14-day free trial.

If you run SEO for agencies with clients selling into more than one country or language, hreflang is probably wrong somewhere in the portfolio right now. Nobody notices because it fails silently: no 500, no broken layout, nothing a client would spot browsing the site. Google just quietly ranks the wrong language version, or drops the cluster and treats each URL as a duplicate of the others.

What hreflang is actually for

hreflang tells Google which URL to serve for a given language and region, for example en-gb or fr-ca, so that /en/ and /fr/ don't end up competing against each other in the same search results. Done correctly, a French searcher lands on the French page and a US one lands on the US page, even if both live on the same domain. Without it, Google picks one version and shows it to everyone, or worse, ranks two versions of the same content against each other and suppresses both.

The mistakes that actually break it

Missing return tags: page A links to page B with hreflang, but B doesn't link back to A. Google requires the pair to be reciprocal, so a one-way hreflang is treated as invalid and often ignored for both pages.
Wrong language or region codes: en-uk instead of en-gb, or a country code where a language code was meant. Typo-level mistakes that silently invalidate the tag.
No x-default: no fallback for visitors whose language doesn't match any listed version, so Google guesses.
hreflang pointing to a 404 or a redirect: a page is deleted or moved in one market and nobody updates the hreflang references on the other language versions.
hreflang pointing to a noindex page: Google won't serve a page it's been told not to index, so the whole cluster effectively loses that version. If this is new to you, see our piece on catching a noindex tag before it goes live.
Conflict with canonical: the canonical tag points somewhere different than the hreflang self-reference. Google trusts the canonical over hreflang, so the hreflang instruction gets overridden and the market-specific page never ranks. We cover this in more detail in our canonical tag checker guide.

Why this breaks more on agency-run, multi-market sites

Multi-language sites mean multiple deploys, multiple redirect rules and, often, several people touching content in different languages at different times. A page gets removed from the English site during a redesign, but the Italian and Spanish versions still reference it. A redirect gets added on one market for SEO reasons and nobody checks what it does to the hreflang cluster. None of this shows up in a normal QA pass: QA checks that the page loads, not that its hreflang references are still alive.

How to check hreflang by hand

Check a single URL with view-source or a browser extension: open the page, search for hreflang in the raw HTML, and verify that each linked URL returns 200, is indexable, and links back to the page you started from. That works for one page. It stops working once you're checking 10 language versions on 20 client sites, every time someone deploys, which is exactly how these errors sit unnoticed for months.

How Deltio does it

Deltio's SEO scanner checks hreflang on every URL it monitors, alongside title tag, meta description, H1, canonical and the lang attribute. It flags hreflang that's missing, invalid, duplicated, or pointing to a URL that doesn't resolve, and compares each scan against the previous one so you see exactly when a reference broke, not just that it's broken today. Scans run automatically, plus manual scans on demand (3 a day on Starter, 10 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise).

Add the first site and see what's actually wrong

Add a client site to Deltio and let the scanner run its first pass. You'll see hreflang, canonical, title and meta description issues on every URL, and get notified the moment any of it changes again. Plans start at £24 a month (£20 billed annually), with a 14-day free trial. See how it fits alongside the rest of your SEO monitoring setup.

Frequently asked questions

What is an hreflang checker?: An hreflang checker is a tool that scans a site's pages and validates every hreflang tag: whether it has a matching return tag, whether the target URL is live and indexable, and whether the language-region code is valid. It catches errors that don't cause visible problems on the site itself but stop Google from showing the right language version to the right searchers.
What happens if hreflang tags are wrong?: Google either ignores the affected hreflang pair or, in the worst case, treats the whole cluster as unreliable and falls back to choosing one version to rank. That usually means the wrong language or country version shows up in search results, or two versions of the same content end up competing against each other instead of each ranking in its own market.
What's the difference between hreflang and canonical?: Canonical tells Google which URL is the master version when several URLs contain the same or very similar content, and hreflang tells Google which URL to serve for a given language and region among URLs that are meant to be different local versions of the same content. When the two conflict, for example a canonical pointing away from a page's own hreflang self-reference, Google trusts the canonical and the hreflang instruction is effectively overridden.
Does Deltio alert me if hreflang tags change?: Yes. Deltio's SEO scanner checks hreflang on every monitored URL and compares each scan to the previous one, so it flags exactly when a tag went missing, became invalid, or started pointing to a broken URL. Alerts arrive by email or Slack, in your language and timezone.
How do I check hreflang manually?: Open the page's raw HTML with view-source or a browser extension, find the hreflang tags in the head, and check each linked URL individually: does it return 200, is it indexable, and does it link back to the page you started from. It works for a single page but doesn't scale once you're checking multiple language versions across a portfolio of client sites.
How much does Deltio cost?: Deltio starts at £24 a month on the Starter plan, or £20 a month if you pay annually. Professional is £49 a month and Enterprise is £119 a month. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial.