# Changelog of hreflang Checker & Return-Tag Validator · SiteVerdict (`siteverdict/siteverdict-hreflang-validator`) Actor

- **URL**: https://apify.com/siteverdict/siteverdict-hreflang-validator/changelog.md
- **Full Actor documentation**: https://apify.com/siteverdict/siteverdict-hreflang-validator.md

## Changelog

### 1.0.0 — 2026-10-11

First release.

- Reads hreflang from `<head>`, HTTP Link headers and XML sitemaps (xhtml:link) and compares the sources with each other.
- Polite crawl that follows hreflang alternates first. Alternates on other domains are fetched to verify return tags.
- Validates ISO 639-1, ISO 15924 and ISO 3166-1 codes, with plain-English explanations of common mistakes.
- Checks for:
  - missing return tags, self-references and x-default
  - duplicate codes
  - targets that are 4xx, redirecting, noindex, canonicalised elsewhere or robots-blocked
  - non-canonical sources
  - `<link>` tags placed in `<body>`
  - mismatches with the html lang attribute
  - inconsistent clusters
- Return-tag matrix per cluster (HTML + CSV), PDF summary, issues CSV, monitoring diff and webhook alerts.
- Pay-per-event: `page-checked`, `site-report`.