Wrong hreflang tags send the wrong page to the wrong country. You’ll lose traffic without even knowing.
Google indexes duplicate content, serves German pages to French users, and drops your rankings. The real issue is that hreflang errors look invisible until it’s too late.
What Is a Hreflang Checker?
Hreflang Checker is a free browser-based tool that scans your website’s hreflang tags to verify they’re correctly implemented across language and regional versions. It checks if your hreflang attributes point to valid, matching pages and flags mismatched, missing, or conflicting tags—no login needed.
Why It Matters for SEO
You lose organic traffic when Google serves the wrong language version. Most people miss that hreflang mistakes block international indexing.
For example, a French user searches in French and clicks your German page because the tag points to the wrong URL. That page bounces fast. Google notices. Rankings drop.
Google recrawls most sites every 3-7 days. If your hreflang tags are broken during that window, you’re invisible to non-primary audiences for at least a week.
How to Use It
- Go to https://scrawl.tools/tools/hreflang-checker (no login needed)
- Enter any URL from your site that uses hreflang tags
- Click “Check” and wait 10-30 seconds for the full audit
What the Results Tell You
You see every hreflang tag found, the target URL, and whether it passes or fails. Broken links, incorrect language codes (like “deu” instead of “de”), and return tag mismatches are highlighted in red.
If a Spanish page says "hreflang='es'" but the return tag on the main site points to a Portuguese version, the tool flags it. You’ll also see HTTP status codes for each target—404s, 301s, or soft 404s—which tank your chances of proper indexing.
Missing return tags are common. One page links to a German version, but the German page doesn’t link back. That breaks the chain. Google ignores both. The tool catches that.
It also detects conflicting signals from sitemaps or HTTP headers. If your HTTP Header Checker shows conflicting language tags, you’ve got a bigger mess.
3 Mistakes Most People Make
- They assume hreflang = translation
Translating a page doesn’t mean you need hreflang. Only use it when you have region-specific intent—like selling to Canada vs. France. Most sites add tags where they aren’t needed, creating noise.
- They skip the return tag
Here's what actually happens: you add a hreflang tag from your US English page to the UK version, but the UK page doesn’t link back. Google sees this as incomplete and drops both from international search results.
- They use it on pages blocked by robots.txt
If Google can’t crawl the target page, the tag is useless. Run your URLs through the Robots.txt Tester first. A blocked German page won’t rank, no matter how perfect your tags look.
You can’t fix what you can’t see. This tool shows exactly where your hreflang setup fails—fast.
Check your international pages now with the free Hreflang Checker. No login needed—just results.