Hreflang Checker Chrome Extension

An invalid status means the URL reported does not contain the hreflang tag of the URL you are checking. The errors occur when pages are not self-referential. If product A has a tag pointing to product B, product B must have a tag pointing to product A.

Let’s say the URL you’re inspecting is https://www.store.com/. It has a hreflang tag of https://www.store.com.au/. An invalid status means the .com.au version of the page does not contain the .com hreflang tag.

Note: The extension automatically handles minor URL differences like trailing slashes, http vs https, and www vs non-www. So if you’re seeing an invalid status, the return link is genuinely missing from the target page.

An invalid language and region match means the URL reported does not contain the same language and region of the URL you are checking. The return link has a different language and region code to the reference.

Let’s say the URL you’re inspecting is https://www.store.com/. It has a language and region of en-us. The URL has a hreflang tag of https://www.store.com.au/. An invalid status means the .com.au version of the page does not contain the en-us language and region for the .com hreflang tag.

The primary language code must match for validation to pass. For example, en-us and en-gb will both pass because they share the en primary language. However, en-us and fr-us will not match even though they share the us region.

If the status is invalid, the language and region will always be invalid.

A warning icon (orange triangle) means the extension couldn’t fully verify the hreflang tag, but it’s not necessarily wrong. This typically happens for one of three reasons:

Geo-IP redirect: The target server redirected the extension to a different locale based on its IP address. For example, visiting https://www.store.com/ might redirect to https://www.store.com/en-au/. Your browser may not experience this redirect (due to cookies or session), but the extension’s validation request does. The hreflang tags themselves may be perfectly fine.

Request timeout: The target page took longer than 15 seconds to respond. This can happen with slow servers or during high traffic.

Other redirects: The page redirected to a different URL that isn’t a simple protocol or www change. Hover over the warning icon to see exactly where it was redirected.

In all cases, hover over the warning icon for a detailed explanation of what happened.

Google requires that every page with hreflang tags includes a tag pointing to itself. This is called a self-referencing hreflang tag.

For example, if you’re on https://www.store.com/ and it has hreflang tags pointing to https://www.store.com.au/ and https://www.store.co.uk/, it must also include a hreflang tag pointing to https://www.store.com/ itself.

If this tag is missing, search engines may not process your hreflang tags correctly. Most CMS platforms and hreflang apps add this automatically, but it’s worth checking.

This warning appears when a page has hreflang tags but its canonical URL points to a different page. This sends conflicting signals to search engines — the hreflang tags say “here are my alternate language versions” while the canonical tag says “the real version of this page is somewhere else.”

For example, if you’re on https://www.store.com/products/shoes but the canonical tag points to https://www.store.com/collections/shoes, search engines won’t know which signal to trust.

To fix this, make sure the canonical URL matches the page URL, or move the hreflang tags to the canonical version of the page.

Hreflang tags must use valid ISO 639-1 two-letter language codes. The extension checks each language code and flags any that aren’t recognised.

Common mistakes include using three-letter codes instead of two-letter codes. For example, eng should be en, fra should be fr, and deu should be de. The extension will suggest the correct code when it detects a common mistake.

The special value x-default is always valid. It tells search engines which page to show when no other language matches.

The extension visits each URL in the hreflang tags in order to validate the code. For each URL in the hreflang tags, clicking the extension to view the hreflang tags is like visiting those webpages at once.

Some websites or platforms like Shopify throttle the number of requests a single IP address can make in a period of time. The extension has built-in retry logic with increasing delays between attempts, which helps avoid triggering rate limits.

If your website still says there’s been too many requests, you can wait a few minutes and try again. A workaround is to use a VPN to change your IP address. Another option is to ask your webhost to increase the possible requests for your IP address.

Refer to our guide on achieving flawless hreflang tags in Shopify. Even if you’re not on Shopify, the structure of hreflang tags and any reported errors remain the same. Hreflang tags are one of the hardest technical topics of SEO to get right so don’t be discouraged.

If you want us to take it all off your plate, we can get it done for you. We have a complete SEO service where we optimize everything about your SEO, including hreflang tags.