Canonical Hreflang Auditor

Store Positioning

Store title: Canonical Hreflang Auditor

Short description: Audit canonical and hreflang relationships, reciprocal tags, conflicts, and international SEO risks.

SEO title: Canonical Hreflang Auditor — technical SEO, web, and domain audit

SEO description: Audit canonical and hreflang relationships, reciprocal tags, conflicts, and international SEO risks. Use it to find crawlability, indexability, security, metadata, and page-quality issues with evidence-backed rows and audit reports.

Categories: SEO_TOOLS

Keywords: canonical, hreflang, auditor, seo audit, web/domain audit

Fixed-Inclusive PPE Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing. Event prices include Apify platform usage; users are not expected to pay a separate platform-usage pass-through charge for the configured pricing model.

• Tier: W1 — Web/domain audit
• Primary event: page-audited at $0.00490 base
• Default max charge: $10.00
• Store discounts: FREE/BRONZE base, SILVER discounted, GOLD deepest approved discount

Event set:

• actor-start: base $0.00500, GOLD $0.00400. Canonical Hreflang Auditor: charged when actor start is completed. The price includes Apify platform usage; no separate usage pass-through is intended.
• page-audited: base $0.00490, GOLD $0.00392. Canonical Hreflang Auditor: charged when page audited is completed. The price includes Apify platform usage; no separate usage pass-through is intended.
• rule-parsed: base $0.00372, GOLD $0.00298. Canonical Hreflang Auditor: charged when rule parsed is completed. The price includes Apify platform usage; no separate usage pass-through is intended.
• finding-emitted: base $0.00372, GOLD $0.00298. Canonical Hreflang Auditor: charged when finding emitted is completed. The price includes Apify platform usage; no separate usage pass-through is intended.
• audit-report-generated: base $0.05000, GOLD $0.04000. Canonical Hreflang Auditor: charged when audit report generated is completed. The price includes Apify platform usage; no separate usage pass-through is intended.

Public Task Concepts

• Audit Canonical Hreflang controls with capped supplied targets
• Find high-priority Canonical Hreflang issues before release
• Validate Canonical Hreflang evidence from supplied pages
• Prioritize Canonical Hreflang fixes with severity and proof
• Export Canonical Hreflang QA rows for client review

Audit canonical and hreflang relationships, reciprocal tags, conflicts, and international SEO risks from safe page snapshots or tightly capped live URLs.

What This Actor Does

Canonical Hreflang Auditor checks whether pages have clear canonical signals and healthy hreflang clusters. It returns structured rows for each page with canonical status, hreflang languages, missing reciprocal links, duplicate or invalid language codes, x-default gaps, conflicts, issue codes, and recommendations.

The default run uses bundled fixture snapshots and makes no network calls. Live fetching is opt-in with low caps so users can start small.

What This Actor Does Not Do

• It does not guarantee rankings, traffic, revenue, or search-engine treatment.
• It does not crawl unlimited sites by default.
• It does not use a browser or proxy by default.
• It does not collect sensitive personal data.

Best Use Cases

• International SEO QA before launching localized pages.
• Finding missing self-referencing hreflang tags.
• Checking reciprocal hreflang relationships across supplied page snapshots.
• Detecting duplicate language codes and invalid hreflang values.
• Finding canonical URLs that conflict with localization clusters.

Input Fields

• pages: optional page snapshots with sourceUrl, html, canonicalUrls, or hreflangs.
• urls: optional live URLs. Used only when fetchPages is true.
• fetchPages: fetch live HTML for URLs. Default false.
• maxPages: page cap. Default 3, maximum 50.
• requestTimeoutMs: per-request timeout for live fetches.
• requireXDefault: flag clusters without x-default.
• requireSelfReference: flag pages without self-referencing hreflang.
• requireReciprocalLinks: check reciprocal links among supplied pages.
• includeReport: write summary JSON and Markdown report to key-value store.
• maxChargeUsd: hard PPE cap. Defaults to $10 and prevents uncharged rows or reports.
• debug: enable verbose logs.

Example Input

{
  "fetchPages": false,
  "maxPages": 3,
  "requireXDefault": true,
  "requireSelfReference": true,
  "requireReciprocalLinks": true,
  "includeReport": true
}

Output Fields

Each dataset row includes:

• sourceUrl, sourceId, and sourceType
• canonicalUrl, canonicalStatus, and canonical issue codes
• hreflangCount, hreflangLanguages, and target URLs
• missingSelfReference, missingXDefault, and reciprocal issue counts
• duplicate and invalid language counts
• combined issueCodes, status, severity, and recommendation

Example Output

{
  "sourceUrl": "https://example.com/fr/",
  "status": "warn",
  "severity": "medium",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://example.com/fr/",
  "canonicalStatus": "self",
  "hreflangLanguages": ["fr", "en"],
  "missingXDefault": true,
  "reciprocalMissingCount": 1,
  "issueCodes": ["missing-x-default", "missing-reciprocal-hreflang"],
  "recommendation": "Add reciprocal hreflang links on alternate pages that are included in the supplied page set."
}

Cost-Control Tips

• Start with the default fixture input.
• Keep fetchPages off unless you need live HTML.
• Use pages snapshots for deterministic audits.
• Keep maxPages low for first live runs.
• Use includeReport: false if you only need dataset rows.

Scheduling Examples

• Daily international SEO QA for a small set of high-value localized pages.
• Weekly pre-launch check for canonical/hreflang changes.
• One-off migration QA after moving localized URLs.

Public Task Examples

• Fixture international SEO audit.
• One live URL smoke after usage is approved.
• Canonical conflict review.
• x-default gap check.
• Reciprocal hreflang check.

FAQ

Does this actor crawl a whole website?

No. It audits supplied snapshots by default and only fetches listed URLs when explicitly enabled.

Does it need residential proxies?

No browser or proxy is used by default. If a target site blocks simple HTTP fetches, provide snapshots through pages instead of enabling live fetches.

Does it guarantee Google will accept my hreflang setup?

No. It surfaces structural issues and likely risks. Search engine behavior is not guaranteed.

Troubleshooting

• Empty output usually means your supplied page snapshots had no canonical or hreflang content and fetchPages was disabled.
• If live fetches time out, lower maxPages, increase requestTimeoutMs, or provide page snapshots.
• If reciprocal checks look incomplete, supply all pages from the same hreflang cluster in one run.

Limitations

• Live fetching does not execute JavaScript.
• Reciprocal checks only compare pages supplied or fetched in the same run.
• The actor validates common hreflang formats but does not replace a full SEO review.

Source And Safety Notes

Use this actor on pages you own, manage, or have permission to audit. The default input avoids network activity to keep Apify automated checks and free-plan users safe.

Changelog

• 1.0.0: Initial local-first canonical/hreflang auditor with fixture tests, safe defaults, PPE billing guards, and summary report output.