Japan SEO Localisation Checker

Japan SEO Localisation Checker 🇯🇵

Find out in seconds whether a web page is really ready for Japanese search (Google Japan / Yahoo! JAPAN). Paste a URL and get a 0–100 Japan readiness score, a grade, and a prioritised list of fixes in English and Japanese.

Built by a native Japanese speaker for teams launching products in Japan, localisation agencies, and SEO consultants who need to check Japanese pages they can't read.

Why this exists

Translated sites often look fine but are broken for Japanese search in ways that are invisible to non-Japanese readers:

• lang="en" left on the Japanese page by a translation plugin
• hreflang="jp" — "jp" is a country code; Japanese is ja. Google silently ignores it
• The Japanese page's canonical points to the English page, so the Japanese page drops out of the index
• Title or meta description left in English
• The "Japanese" locale actually serves Chinese text (kanji without kana)
• Mojibake from Shift_JIS / UTF-8 mix-ups
• og:locale="ja-JP" instead of ja_JP

This Actor catches all of them.

What it checks

Category	Points	Checks
Language declaration	15	<html lang>, jp vs ja, underscore format, lang vs actual content mismatch
Title	15	Present, written in Japanese, length in full-width characters
Meta description	15	Present, written in Japanese, length in full-width characters
Content	20	Share of Japanese characters, Japanese-vs-Chinese detection, JS-only pages
hreflang	15	ja entry, invalid codes, self-reference, x-default, absolute URLs, conflicts
Canonical	10	Present, absolute, self-referencing, not pointing to another language
Technical	10	Charset (UTF-8 vs legacy), header/meta conflicts, viewport, og:locale, mojibake

A noindex page is capped at 30 points.

Tip: enter your English URL. If it declares hreflang="ja", the Japanese version is found and audited automatically.

Input

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://example.com/" }],
  "followHreflangJa": true,
  "maxPages": 100
}

Output (one item per page)

{
  "finalUrl": "https://example.com/ja/",
  "japanReadinessScore": 62,
  "grade": "C",
  "summary": "Japan readiness 62/100 (C). 1 critical, 3 warnings, 1 notes.",
  "categoryScores": { "language": "15/15", "title": "15/15", "metaDescription": "7/15", "content": "20/20", "hreflang": "3/15", "canonical": "2/10", "technical": "8/10" },
  "topFixes": ["Each language version should have a canonical pointing to itself.", "..."],
  "issues": [
    {
      "severity": "critical",
      "category": "canonical",
      "id": "canonical-to-other-language",
      "message": "This Japanese page's canonical points to the \"en\" version...",
      "messageJa": "日本語ページのcanonicalが「en」版を指しています...",
      "fix": "Each language version should have a canonical pointing to itself."
    }
  ],
  "details": { "htmlLang": "ja", "detectedContentLanguage": "ja", "hreflang": [], "bodyText": { "japaneseRatio": 0.91 } }
}

Every issue has a stable id, so you can filter or track issues across runs.

Pricing

Pay per page audited. Failed fetches (timeouts, 404s, non-HTML) are not charged. Lightweight: no browser, no AI calls.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients can call it directly, e.g. "Check whether https://example.com/ja/ is ready for Japanese SEO."

Limitations

• Analyses the HTML returned by the server; content rendered only by JavaScript is not executed.
• Length guidelines (title ≈15–35, description ≈50–120 full-width characters) are common Japanese SEO practice, not official Google limits.
• hreflang reciprocity across pages is not yet verified (planned).

日本語での説明

URLを入力するだけで、そのページが日本の検索向けに正しくローカライズされているかを100点満点で採点します。lang属性、hreflang（「jp」誤記を含む）、canonical、日本語タイトル・説明文、日本語比率、中国語誤配信、文字化けなどをチェックし、修正方法を日英で出力します。