Updated April 2026

Hreflang Errors: Find and Fix Every Type

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What Is Hreflang and Why Does It Break?

Hreflang is an HTML attribute and sitemap element that tells Google which language and region a page targets, and which other pages are its international equivalents. When implemented correctly, Google serves the right language version to users in the right country. When it contains errors, Google ignores the whole hreflang cluster and falls back to its own signals — often serving the wrong language version, or indexing only one variant while excluding others.

Hreflang is notoriously brittle because it requires bidirectional confirmation: every page in a hreflang cluster must reference every other page in the cluster. A single missing return link invalidates the signal for the affected pair. With 10 language versions of a site and 500 pages each, that is 5,000 pages each with 10 hreflang tags — 50,000 hreflang annotations that all need to be correct and consistent.

Error 1: Missing Return Links

The most common hreflang error. If your English page references your French page with hreflang, the French page must also reference the English page back. Missing this return link breaks the bidirectional confirmation Google requires. Google will report this as an error in Search Console under International Targeting, and the hreflang signal for that language pair is ignored.

Fix: ensure every page in your hreflang cluster includes hreflang annotations for all other variants, including itself (the self-referencing hreflang). A page with 5 language versions needs 5 hreflang tags: one pointing to itself with its own language code, and four pointing to the other four variants. Automated sitemap-based hreflang implementations handle this better than manually maintained HTML header tags.

Error 2: Invalid Language or Region Codes

Hreflang requires ISO 639-1 language codes (e.g., en, fr, de) optionally combined with ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 region codes (e.g., en-GB, fr-FR). Common mistakes: using en-UK instead of en-GB (UK is not a valid ISO 3166-1 code — Great Britain is GB); using three-letter language codes like eng instead of en; using region codes without language codes; or using x-default for the wrong purpose.

x-default should be used for the page that serves as the fallback when no other language/region match applies — typically a language selection page or the English version for international audiences. It is not a catch-all for the homepage or the “main” version of the site.

Error 3: Hreflang Pointing to Redirects or 404s

All URLs referenced in hreflang annotations must return 200 OK directly — no redirects, no 404s, no 301s. If you restructured your URL hierarchy and updated the pages but not the hreflang annotations, your hreflang cluster may be referencing old URLs that now redirect to new ones. Google does not follow the redirect to resolve hreflang — it treats the redirecting URL as an invalid hreflang reference and ignores that annotation.

Fix: crawl all hreflang-annotated URLs and check their HTTP status codes. Any non-200 URL needs to be updated in the hreflang annotation to the final destination URL. If you maintain hreflang in an XML sitemap, update the sitemap and resubmit it in Google Search Console. If you maintain hreflang in HTML headers, update each page's template to reference the correct URLs.

Error 4: Inconsistent Hreflang Between Sitemap and HTML

Hreflang can be implemented in three places: HTML <head> link elements, HTTP response headers, or XML sitemap. You should use only one method consistently. Using HTML tags on some pages and sitemap entries on others creates inconsistencies that confuse Google's parser. Additionally, if your sitemap hreflang references a URL that the target page does not acknowledge in its own HTML hreflang, the bidirectional confirmation fails.

The sitemap approach is generally recommended for large sites because it centralizes hreflang management — one sitemap update propagates to all pages rather than requiring template changes across thousands of files. The HTML approach is preferred for smaller sites where individual page control is manageable and the sitemap is simple.

Error 5: Hreflang on Non-Canonical Pages

Hreflang annotations should only be placed on canonical pages. If page A has a canonical pointing to page B, hreflang should be on page B — not page A. Placing hreflang on non-canonical pages sends conflicting signals: the canonical says “this is not the definitive URL,” while the hreflang says “use this URL for language targeting.” Google resolves this by using the canonical URL for hreflang purposes, meaning your non-canonical page's hreflang annotation is ignored while the cluster annotation on the canonical is what matters.

Error 6: Region Targeting Without Language Targeting

Using hreflang="GB" instead of hreflang="en-GB" is invalid — you cannot specify a region without a language. Google may interpret bare region codes inconsistently. Always combine language and region when targeting a specific country's language variant: en-AU for Australian English, pt-BR for Brazilian Portuguese, zh-TW for Traditional Chinese in Taiwan. If you want to target all speakers of a language regardless of region, use just the language code: es for all Spanish speakers, fr for all French speakers.

How to Find Hreflang Errors on Your Site

Google Search Console > International Targeting (under Legacy Tools) shows hreflang errors Google detected. Screaming Frog can crawl your site and cross-reference hreflang annotations against actual page responses, identifying missing return links, invalid codes, and broken URLs. The hreflang tester tool at sitemapfixer.com checks individual URLs for valid hreflang implementation. For sites with a hreflang sitemap, validate the sitemap XML directly and compare it against your live page responses to confirm bidirectional consistency.

Hreflang Errors in XML Sitemaps

When implementing hreflang via XML sitemap, each URL entry must include <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="lang-code" href="url"/> elements for every language variant. The sitemap namespace declaration must include xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml". Missing this namespace causes XML parsers to reject the hreflang annotations. Common sitemap hreflang errors: omitting the namespace declaration, using self-closing tags incorrectly, referencing absolute URLs inconsistently (mixing HTTP and HTTPS or www and non-www), and omitting the self-referencing hreflang annotation for the page's own URL.

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