Where is it better to put hreflang: in the HTML or in the sitemap?

Google accepts both options equally, but a sitemap is more convenient on large sites: it does not bloat every page with a dozen tags. The main condition is not to duplicate both methods with different data.

Is hreflang needed if the languages live on different domains?

Yes, it works across domains too. The main thing is that every page lists all versions and that the links are mutual.

What should x-default point to?

The language-switcher page, if there is one, or the main international version. If there is none — the English one. The main thing is that it should be a page that does not force the user to read an unfamiliar language.

How does hreflang relate to canonical?

Each page's canonical must point to that page itself. A common mistake is to set the canonical of every language version to the English one: Google will then drop all the others from the index and hreflang will not work.

hreflang generator and validator for a multilingual site

Build correct alternate language version tags — in HTML, in a sitemap or as a PHP snippet. The second tab checks existing tags for errors that show no symptom other than a drop in traffic. Works offline: suitable for staging and password-protected sites.

Preset

The second subtag is the country of the audience, not the country of the language. For a site operating in Ukraine, the Russian version should be ru-UA, not ru-RU: ru-RU tells Google that the page is meant for users in Russia. Almost every generator inserts exactly ru-RU — and that is a silent loss of traffic.

Language	Region	Version URL	x-default

Settings Add x-default The default version for everyone whose language matched none of the others. It is missing on 56% of sites with hreflang — and it is precisely this absence that most often means a Spanish-speaking user from Canada lands on a random locale. Explanatory comments in the output Clear this if you need clean code without explanations.

Output format One of the three methods is enough. Using both the tags and the sitemap is not a mistake, but it does not double the effect either.

Generated code

Fill in at least two language versions to see the code.

The <head> source code or an XML sitemap To check reciprocity, paste several language versions one after another, separating them with a line of three hyphens: --- https://example.com/en/. The URL after the hyphens is the address of the page whose <head> follows. If the code contains rel="canonical", the address can be omitted — we will take it from there.

Page URL (if only a <head> without a canonical was pasted) Without the page address the self-reference — the tag pointing to the page itself — cannot be checked.

Page	hreflang	Points to	Status

Text report

Paste the code above — the report will appear here.

Neither the URL nor the pasted code leaves your browser — both the generation and the audit run locally.

Two thirds of sites with hreflang contain errors

According to an Ahrefs study of 374,756 domains, 67% of sites with hreflang have configured it incorrectly. The most common problems: 56% have no x-default, on 18% the page does not link to itself, 15% have no return links. The rules are simple, but easy to break. Every language version must list ALL versions, itself included. If page A points to B, then B is obliged to point to A — otherwise Google ignores the relationship entirely. x-default marks the version for visitors whose language matches none of the available ones. One trap concerns us directly: uk is the code of the Ukrainian LANGUAGE. The country code for the United Kingdom is GB, while UK is assigned to Ukraine in the ISO 3166 standard. That is why en-UK is almost always a mistake — en-GB was meant. It is the most common error worldwide. And a second one, purely ours: for a Ukrainian site with a Russian version the correct pair is uk-UA and ru-UA. That is, the Russian language targeted at Ukraine, not ru-RU. No English-language generator hints at this, because to it this is exotica.

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hreflang generator and validator for a multilingual site

Two thirds of sites with hreflang contain errors

Frequently asked questions