Hreflang Tag Checker

Validate hreflang tags across multilingual and multi-region sites to prevent international SEO issues. Incorrect hreflang implementation causes search engines to serve the wrong language version to users — costing traffic in every market you target. This actor checks HTML <link> elements and HTTP headers, validates language codes against ISO standards, and grades each page from A to F.

Features

• Dual source detection — finds hreflang tags in both HTML <link> elements and HTTP Link headers
• ISO validation — checks language and region codes against ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 standards
• x-default check — verifies the required x-default fallback tag is present
• Self-reference validation — confirms each page includes a self-referencing hreflang entry
• Duplicate detection — flags duplicate or conflicting hreflang entries for the same language
• Compliance grading — assigns A/B/C/F grades based on the severity of issues found
• Batch processing — check hundreds of URLs in a single run

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	Yes	—	List of page URLs to check for hreflang implementation
checkBidirectional	boolean	No	true	Verify that hreflang links point back to the source page
timeout	integer	No	15000	HTTP request timeout in milliseconds

Input Example

{
    "urls": [
        "https://example.com/en/",
        "https://example.com/de/",
        "https://example.com/fr/"
    ],
    "checkBidirectional": true,
    "timeout": 15000
}

Output

Each URL produces one dataset item with the full hreflang audit results and a compliance grade.

• url (string) — the checked page URL
• hreflangCount (number) — total number of hreflang tags found
• hasXDefault (boolean) — whether an x-default tag is present
• hasSelfReference (boolean) — whether the page references itself in its hreflang tags
• tags (array) — all discovered hreflang tags with hreflang code and href URL
• issues (string[]) — list of errors and warnings found
• grade (string) — compliance grade: A (perfect), B (minor), C (warnings), F (errors)

Output Example

{
    "url": "https://example.com/en/",
    "hreflangCount": 4,
    "hasXDefault": true,
    "hasSelfReference": true,
    "tags": [
        { "hreflang": "en", "href": "https://example.com/en/" },
        { "hreflang": "de", "href": "https://example.com/de/" },
        { "hreflang": "fr", "href": "https://example.com/fr/" },
        { "hreflang": "x-default", "href": "https://example.com/en/" }
    ],
    "issues": [],
    "grade": "A"
}

Pricing

Event	Cost
URL Checked	$0.001 per URL

You are charged per URL checked. Platform usage fees apply separately.

Use Cases

• International SEO audits — validate hreflang implementation across all language versions of your site
• Multi-region launch QA — verify correct hreflang setup before launching new country-specific pages
• Migration testing — confirm hreflang tags survive intact after a CMS migration or URL restructure
• Agency reporting — schedule automated checks for multilingual client sites and flag regressions
• Competitive benchmarking — analyze how competitors structure their international targeting

Related Actors

Actor	What it adds
Broken Links Checker	Verify that the URLs referenced in hreflang tags actually return 200 OK
Redirect Chain Analyzer	Check whether hreflang target URLs redirect, which can confuse search engines
XML Sitemap URL Extractor	Extract all multilingual URLs from your sitemap to feed into the hreflang checker