Canonical/Hreflang Bulk QA

Scans public static HTML for canonical and hreflang link-tag signals.

This Actor is for teams that maintain multilingual, regional, ecommerce, editorial, or programmatic pages and need a quick evidence report before a release or migration. It reads public static HTML and reports machine-readable issues in the link tags that commonly carry canonicalization and localization intent.

What it checks

• Input from urls, sitemapUrl, or public csvUrl
• Page fetch status for every sampled URL
• Optional sitemap URL-set monitor mode for repeated runs with sitemapUrl
• Missing, multiple, conflicting, relative, cross-host, query-string, fragment, and tracking-parameter canonical signals
• Missing hreflang as an informational signal for single-language pages
• Invalid hreflang values
• Relative or non-http hreflang hrefs
• Duplicate hreflang values
• Missing self-referencing hreflang URL
• Missing x-default when multiple hreflang alternates are declared
• Canonical/hreflang cluster alignment hints, without fetching every alternate URL

Findings

Each finding includes:

• severity
• confidence
• evidence
• caveat
• source URL with query strings redacted
• Google documentation references where applicable

Primary finding IDs include:

• canonical.missing
• canonical.multiple
• canonical.href_not_fully_qualified
• canonical.tracking_query
• canonical.cross_origin
• canonical.not_in_hreflang_cluster
• hreflang.missing
• hreflang.invalid_code
• hreflang.href_not_fully_qualified
• hreflang.duplicate_language
• hreflang.self_reference_missing
• hreflang.x_default_missing
• sitemap.url_added
• sitemap.url_removed
• sitemap.url_count_dropped
• sitemap.lastmod_stalled

Boundaries

This is an informational diagnostic tool for public pages. It does not validate overall SEO performance, reproduce Google Search Console, promise indexing, choose the canonical URL Google will select, promise localized serving, or improve rankings.

The scanner inspects static HTML only. It does not render JavaScript, sign in, solve CAPTCHA, fetch private pages, or verify reciprocal hreflang links on alternate pages.

Sitemap monitor mode compares the current public sitemap URL set with the latest compact baseline. It does not store sitemap response bodies and does not promise indexing, alert coverage, traffic, or platform outcomes.

Billing note

Pay-per-event billing is based on reachable URLs only. Unreachable pages are reported as findings, but they are not counted as checked URLs.

References

• Canonical URL methods: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls
• URL canonicalization: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/canonicalization
• Localized versions and hreflang: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions
• Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/managing-multi-regional-sites

Related tools

• Site Migration Redirect QA - Use when canonical findings are part of a URL migration or redirect map review.
• Social Card / Open Graph Bulk QA - Use when the same page set also needs share-preview metadata checks.
• Structured Data Bulk QA - Use when indexing signals and JSON-LD shape should be reviewed together.