hreflang checker for multilingual sites

hreflang tells search engines that a page has versions in other languages or for other countries, and which URL is which. Google reads it from three places: link tags in the HTML head, the HTTP Link header, and the XML sitemap (Google Search Central, checked 14 November 2026). It helps Google show each searcher the version in their language.

The most common reason is a missing return link. Google's docs (checked 14 November 2026) say that if two pages do not both point to each other, the tags are ignored. Each version must list itself and every other version. Other reasons are invalid codes and links to pages that redirect, return an error or are not the canonical URL.

Use an ISO 639-1 language code, such as en, de or ja. Add an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code if you target a country, such as en-GB or pt-BR. A script code is allowed too, such as zh-Hant. A country alone is not valid. Common mistakes are en-UK (use en-GB) and jp (use ja). Google does not support es-419 (Google Search Central, checked 14 November 2026).

It is optional, but recommended. x-default names the page for visitors whose language or country you do not cover, such as a language picker or your main version. Google reserves the value for that fallback (checked 14 November 2026). Without it, there is no named fallback page. This checker reports a missing x-default as a low finding.

Yes. Each language version should be its own canonical. If the French page has a canonical tag pointing to the English page, you are telling Google that French is a duplicate, and its hreflang may be dropped. hreflang links should also point to canonical URLs, not to addresses that redirect or name another canonical.

Google treats the three methods the same (Google Search Central, checked 14 November 2026). HTML tags are the most common. HTTP headers work for PDFs and other files without HTML. The sitemap keeps large sets out of your pages. Pick one. If you use more than one, they must list the same set; this checker compares them for each page.

Yes. Google allows alternates on other domains, such as example.de and example.fr (checked 14 November 2026). Every URL must be a full URL, with https:// and the domain. This checker only fetches the site you entered, so alternates on other domains are listed with their codes, but their return links are marked as not checked.

At most 24 requests: robots.txt, your XML sitemap (from the robots.txt Sitemap: line, else /sitemap.xml, plus up to two child sitemaps of an index) and at most 20 pages. Those are the URLs you entered, then the alternates they name on the same site. If robots.txt blocks crawlers like ours, we stop and tell you. No AI model is used.

No. AI answer engines change their output frequently, and no vendor — including Leadee — can guarantee a ranking or a mention. Leadee publishes confidence intervals on every metric so you can see how much a result can vary run to run.

Leadee runs your prompt set against each AI engine on a weekly to daily schedule, depending on plan, through official vendor APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Perplexity, Anthropic, DataForSEO) — never by scraping consumer chat interfaces — and reports mention rate, citation rate, average position, share of voice and sentiment with a 95% confidence interval.

Email support@leadee.ai or use Talk to an expert at https://leadee.ai/contact-sales — the Netbase JSC team behind Leadee replies by email or WhatsApp — or WhatsApp the CEO directly at https://wa.me/84937869689.