How to Tell Google About Localized Pages

When you have multiple versions of the same page targeting different languages or regions, explicitly telling Google about these variations helps it serve the most appropriate page to users.

Why Use hreflang and Alternate Annotations? #

Google may find alternate versions on its own but explicitly indicating them is best practice.
Useful when you have:
- Same content in multiple languages
- Small regional variations in a single language (e.g., US English, UK English)
- Partial translations like translated templates with untranslated user content
Localized pages are duplicates only if the main content is identical and untranslated.

3 Methods to Indicate Alternate Language/Region Versions #

Method	When to Use	Notes
HTML Tags	For typical web pages where you can edit <head>	Most common, simple to maintain
HTTP Headers	For non-HTML files like PDFs	Useful for downloadable documents
XML Sitemap	For large sites or when you want to centralize hreflang	Works well for big sites, needs XML editing

You can choose any one method or combine, but managing one well is easier.

General Guidelines for hreflang Tags #

Each language version must list itself and all other variants.
URLs must be fully qualified, including https:// or http://.
Alternate URLs can be on different domains.
For languages spoken in multiple regions, add a generic language-only version for unspecified locales (e.g., en for all English speakers).
Tags must be bidirectional (page A points to B and B points back to A), otherwise ignored.
Use x-default for fallback pages (language selectors or default homepage).

Example: HTML hreflang Tags in <head>

Suppose you have pages for:

English (generic)
English UK (en-gb)
English US (en-us)
German (de)
Default landing page (x-default)

<head>

</head>

Example: HTTP Header for PDFs #

Link: <https://example.com/file-en.pdf>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”en”,

<https://example.com/file-de.pdf>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”de”,

<https://example.com/file-fr.pdf>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”fr”

Example: XML Sitemap hreflang Entries #

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″

xmlns:xhtml=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>

<url>

<loc>https://example.com/en/page.html</loc>

<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://example.com/en/page.html”/>

<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”https://example.com/de/page.html”/>

<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x-default” href=”https://example.com/”/>

</url>

<url>

<loc>https://example.com/de/page.html</loc>

<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://example.com/en/page.html”/>

<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”https://example.com/de/page.html”/>

<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x-default” href=”https://example.com/”/>

</url>

</urlset>

Supported hreflang Codes #

Format: language or language-region (ISO 639-1 + optional ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2)
Examples:
- en (English, generic)
- en-gb (English UK)
- de (German)
- de-ch (German Swiss)
- zh-Hant (Chinese Traditional)
- zh-Hans-US (Chinese Simplified for US)

Don’t use only country code (e.g., be is Belarusian language, not Belgium).

Use the x-default for Fallback Pages #

The x-default hreflang value is for a fallback page (e.g., language selector or homepage).
It tells Google what to show when no language matches user preferences.

Example:

Common Mistakes to Avoid #

Missing bidirectional hreflang links
Incorrect or unsupported language and region codes
Using region code alone without language (e.g., uk instead of en-gb)
Not using fully-qualified URLs (must include https://)
Forgetting to include the current page in hreflang annotations

Tools to Validate hreflang #

Aleyda Solis’s hreflang tag generator
Merkle’s hreflang tag testing tool

SEO

Tell Google About Localized Versions of Your Page