What Is hreflang? How Google Uses It to Serve the Right Language or Regional Page

What Is hreflang, in Google’s Words?

Google describes hreflang as the way to tell it about “localized variations of the same content”. Its guide, Tell Google about localized versions of your page (last updated September 21, 2026), says: “Use hreflang to tell Google about the variations of your content, so that we can understand that these pages are localized variations of the same content.” If you have versions “for different languages or regions”, Google says doing so “will help Google Search point users to the most appropriate version of your page by language or region.”

Google also says it may find alternate versions without help, “but it is usually best for you to explicitly indicate your language- or region-specific pages.” Google lists three cases where hreflang is recommended: a translated template around untranslated main content (common on forums), small regional variations in one language (Google’s example is English content targeted to the US, GB and Ireland), and fully translated sites.

hreflang at a Glance

hreflang is a Google-documented signal that maps each URL to a language and, optionally, a region. Every row below comes from a Google Search Central page read on October 8, 2026.

Where hreflang Comes From

Google introduced rel="alternate" hreflang in September 2010 for pages with translated templates. It expanded it in December 2011 to cover regional and fully translated content, and added x-default in April 2013. Each step is documented on Google’s Search Central Blog.

The attribute name itself comes from HTML, where hreflang on a link states the language of the linked resource. The search-engine rules (return links, x-default, supported codes) are Google’s, and this article covers Google’s implementation only.

How to Write hreflang: HTML, HTTP Header and Sitemap

Google accepts hreflang in three places and treats them the same. Its guide says “The three methods are equivalent from Google’s perspective”, and that using all three at once brings no benefit and is “much harder to manage”. Choose one per site.

HTML link tags

Put one <link> per version, including the page itself, inside the <head>. Google says “The set of links is identical for every version of the page.” Adapted from Google’s example:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://en-gb.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://en-us.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://en.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://de.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.example.com/" />

HTTP Link header

Use this for non-HTML files such as PDFs, where there is no <head>:

Link: <https://example.com/file.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="en",
      <https://de-ch.example.com/file.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="de-CH",
      <https://de.example.com/file.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="de"

XML sitemap

Declare the xhtml namespace and give each <url> entry a child <xhtml:link> for every version, including itself. Google says these child entries “don’t count towards the URL limit for sitemaps.” If you already manage an XML sitemap, this is often the easiest method for large sites.

<url>
  <loc>https://www.example.com/english/page.html</loc>
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://www.example.de/deutsch/page.html"/>
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-CH" href="https://www.example.de/schweiz-deutsch/page.html"/>
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://www.example.com/english/page.html"/>
</url>

The Rules Google Applies to hreflang

Google ignores hreflang annotations that break its rules, so small errors switch the signal off. The most important rule is reciprocity: Google says “If two pages don’t both point to each other, the tags will be ignored”, so that a third party cannot claim to be a version of your page. The full list, from Google’s guide:

• Self-reference: “Each language version must list itself as well as all other language versions.”
• Return links: if page X lists page Y, page Y must list page X. If a complete set of bidirectional links becomes difficult to maintain, Google says you can omit some languages on some pages, but that it is important to link newly expanded language pages both ways to the originating or dominant language.
• Absolute URLs: “fully-qualified, including the transport method”, so https://example.com/foo, not /foo.
• Language first: the first code is an ISO 639-1 language. “You can’t specify the country code by itself.” Google’s example: be means Belarusian, not Belgium.
• Supported codes only: “Only language codes listed in ISO 639-1 and region codes listed in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 are supported”; Google names es-419 as unsupported. If you use codes “listed as reserved for something else, Google Search ignores that part of the annotation”; Google’s examples are EU, UN and UK, which it says “doesn’t have an effect on Google Search”. Google’s own example for English in the UK is en-GB.
• Case: values are case-insensitive; uppercase regions such as en-GB follow the ISO convention.
• Scripts: you can state a script with ISO 15924, such as zh-Hant or zh-Hans-US.
• Markup hygiene: tags must sit in a “well-formed <head>” and must not be combined with other attributes such as media in one tag.
• A catch-all is wise: with several regional English pages, Google suggests also giving a generic en page for unmatched English speakers.

x-default is the reserved value “used when no other language/region matches the user’s browser setting.” Google says it “was designed for language selector pages” and works best there.

How Google Uses hreflang

Google uses hreflang to choose which version of a page to show a searcher, and as a signal in canonical selection. It does not use hreflang to work out a page’s language. Google says it relies on “algorithms to determine the language”, and that it uses “the visible content of your page to determine its language” rather than “code-level language information such as lang attributes, or the URL” (Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites).

• Serving: with a complete set of annotations, “Google Search returns the appropriate result for the user, according to their browser settings”, in Google’s worked example.
• Duplicates: “Localized versions of a page are only considered duplicates if the main content of the page remains untranslated.”
• Canonicals: Google’s canonicalization guide says that “for canonicalization purposes Google prefers URLs that are part of hreflang clusters”, and asks you to “specify a canonical page in the same language” when using hreflang. If you use rel="canonical" on localized pages, read what a canonical URL is first (Google).
• Locale targeting: Google lists hreflang among the signals it uses to determine a page’s target audience, alongside ccTLDs, server location and “local addresses and phone numbers on the pages, the use of local language and currency”.

Google also notes that Googlebot usually crawls from the US and “sends HTTP requests without setting Accept-Language”. That is why it recommends separate URLs per language over cookies or browser-based switching, and warns against redirecting users automatically by guessed language. For how coverage in other languages relates to AI answers, see our explainer on non-English coverage and AI visibility.

What hreflang Is Not

hreflang is not a redirect, a canonical tag or a language detector. Google describes it as a way to tell Google which URLs are localized versions of each other, so it can point users to the right one. It does not move users, merge pages or change what language Google thinks a page is in.

• Not a redirect. Users still land on the URL Google shows them. Google suggests adding visible links so users can switch versions.
• Not a canonical. Google’s canonicalization guide says rel="canonical" annotations “with hreflang, lang, media, and type attributes are not used for canonicalization”.
• Not a fix for mixed-language pages. Google advises “a single language for content and navigation on each page” and “avoiding side-by-side translations”.
• Not needed for a single-language, single-market site. With one version of each page there is nothing to map.

hreflang vs Related Signals

How to Check Your hreflang Setup

Check hreflang by reading what the server actually sends, then confirming every pair links back. Google’s guide does not name a Google tool for this; it names two third-party tools, Aleyda Solis’s hreflang tags generator and Merkle’s hreflang tag testing tool, and says they “are not maintained or checked by Google”.

1. View the source of each version (or run curl -I for header-based files) and list the hreflang values.
2. Check self-reference: each page appears in its own list.
3. Check return links: open each listed URL and confirm it lists the first page back.
4. Check codes against ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2: no uk for the United Kingdom, no region-only values.
5. Check each listed URL loads (HTTP 200) and is the version you want indexed, with a canonical in the same language, as Google’s canonicalization guide asks.

Domain moves are a common time for hreflang to break, because every alternate URL changes; our domain migration guide covers updating them.

Common Misconceptions About hreflang

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Methodology

This explainer is built from Google Search Central documentation and Google’s Search Central Blog, read on October 8, 2026. Google’s hreflang guide was last updated September 21, 2026. Rules and quotations are Google’s; this article does not cover how other search engines handle hreflang, which they document separately. We did not test hreflang on a live site for this article, and the third-party tools Google names were not evaluated.

1. official Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page (last updated September 21, 2026).
2. official Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites.
3. official Google Search Central, How to specify a canonical with rel="canonical" and other methods (last updated July 10, 2026).
4. official Google Search Central Blog, Unifying content under multilingual templates (September 9, 2010).
5. official Google Search Central Blog, New markup for multilingual content (December 5, 2011).
6. official Google Search Central Blog, Introducing “x-default hreflang” for international landing pages (April 10, 2013).