hreflang Tag Generator

This hreflang tag generator builds the annotations that tell Google which language or regional version of a page to show each searcher. Enter the versions of a page, or paste hundreds of sets from a spreadsheet, and you get hreflang tags as HTML, an HTTP header, or an XML sitemap. Every code and URL is checked against Google’s rules as you type, with one-click fixes for common mistakes such as en-UK or en_US. Everything runs in your browser.

How to generate hreflang tags

• Add each version of the page. Enter a language code, such as de or en-GB, and the page’s full URL. Suggestions appear as you type, with the language and country spelled out.
• Choose a default page. Pick the version, or another URL, that people should see when no version matches.
• Fix anything flagged. Invalid codes and relative URLs are marked on the version, with the corrected value one click away.
• Copy the format you need: HTML tags for the page’s head, an HTTP header for PDFs and other files, or XML sitemap entries.

Already have hreflang tags? Use Import from page HTML to paste a page’s source. The tool reads its tags and canonical URL, then tells you whether the page lists itself and which codes need fixing.

What hreflang tags do

hreflang tags link equivalent pages in different languages or for different regions, so Google can show the version that fits each searcher: the German page in Germany, the UK page in the United Kingdom. They don’t make Google detect a page’s language: Google says it determines the language with its own algorithms and ignores the HTML lang attribute for that. They also don’t stop translated pages being seen as duplicates, because Google only treats localized pages as duplicates when the main content is untranslated.

Bing treats hreflang as a much weaker signal than the content-language meta tag, according to a 2020 statement from Bing, so multilingual sites often add both. Yandex supports hreflang in HTML but no longer reads it from sitemaps.

hreflang code format

An hreflang value is a language code from ISO 639-1, optionally followed by a region code from ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. You can also add an ISO 15924 script, such as Traditional Chinese. Codes aren’t case-sensitive, but the convention is lowercase language and uppercase region.

Code	Valid?	Why
en, de, ja	Yes	Language only: matches speakers in any country.
en-GB, es-MX, pt-BR	Yes	Language and country.
zh-Hant, zh-Hant-TW	Yes	Language with a script, optionally a country.
en-UK	No	The United Kingdom’s code is GB. Google ignores UK, EU, and UN.
es-419	No	Numeric regions such as Latin America aren’t supported by Google.
en_US	No	Use a hyphen, not an underscore.
gb, jp, cn	No	These are countries. Use en-GB, ja, and zh.

Watch out for valid codes that mean something unexpected: se is Northern Sami, not Swedish (sv), and kr is Kanuri, not Korean (ko). The generator warns about these lookalikes.

Example: hreflang tags for three versions

A store with a US English page, a UK English page, and a German page would put this block in the head of all three pages:

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

The German page uses de without a country, so it covers German speakers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The US page doubles as the x-default for everyone else. This is exactly what the hreflang tag generator produces when you load its example and fix the en-UK code.

x-default hreflang

The x-default value names the page to show when no other version matches the searcher’s language or country. Google recommends it, and it was designed for language selector pages, but it can also point to your main version, often the English page. It doesn’t need a language code, and it should appear in the tags on every page in the set.

Return links and self-references

Every page in a set must list itself and every other version. If page A links to page B, page B must link back to A, or Google may ignore the annotations. That’s why the generator gives you one block of tags for the whole set: paste the same block into every page. One page can serve several codes, such as a single English page for both en-GB and en-IE, but each code should point to only one URL.

HTML tags, HTTP headers, or a sitemap

Google treats the three methods the same, and there’s no benefit in using more than one:

• HTML tags go in the page’s <head>. They’re the easiest to check, but every page needs updating when you add a language.
• HTTP Link headers work for files without HTML, such as PDFs. The header is the same on every version.
• An XML hreflang sitemap keeps everything in one file, which suits large sites. Every <url> entry lists all versions, including itself.

For many pages at once, the hreflang generator has a spreadsheet mode: switch to Many pages and paste from Excel or Google Sheets: one hreflang code per column heading, one set per row, empty cells where a page has no translation. You can download the full sitemap or a CSV with the tags for every URL. A sitemap can hold 50,000 URLs and 50 MB. The alternate links don’t count toward the URL limit, but they add to the file size, and the generator tells you when to split.

hreflang and canonical tags

Each URL in your hreflang set should be the canonical version of that page: indexable, returning a 200 status, and not redirecting. Google says that when you use hreflang, the canonical should point to a page in the same language, or the closest substitute if there isn’t one. A common mistake is giving every language version a canonical tag that points to the English page, which tells Google to ignore the translations. Google also tends to prefer URLs that are part of an hreflang cluster. To check a live page, paste its source into Import from page HTML: the tool compares its canonical URL with its hreflang set.

Common hreflang mistakes

• Missing return links, usually because a new language was added to some pages but not others.
• Wrong codes: en-UK, en_US, a country on its own, or a three-letter code such as eng.
• Relative URLs. hreflang URLs must be absolute, including https://.
• Tracking parameters or #fragments in URLs, instead of the canonical URL.
• Pointing hreflang at redirecting, broken, or noindexed pages.
• Combining hreflang with a media attribute in the same link tag, which Google says not to do.

hreflang in WordPress and Shopify

Most multilingual plugins, such as WPML, Polylang, and Weglot, add hreflang tags automatically, and Shopify adds them for its languages and markets. In that case, use the importer to check the tags they output rather than adding a second set. Search Console’s International Targeting report has been retired, so checking the live HTML is the most direct test.

Once your hreflang tags are in place, check how each version appears in search with the SERP Snippet Preview, make sure no language folder is blocked with the robots.txt Tester, and review each page’s outline with the Heading Structure Checker.