returntag

Q: What is an hreflang return tag?

A return tag is the reciprocal hreflang link. If page A lists page B as an alternate, page B must list page A back — otherwise Google ignores the pairing entirely. returntag crawls every page in the cluster and checks that each declared alternate links back, so a missing return tag on any single page shows up on the map instead of silently breaking the whole set.

Free, no signup. A page can declare its hreflang alternates perfectly and still get ignored — because the page on the other end never links back. returntag crawls the whole cluster from one URL (or a sitemap) and checks return tags, self-references, x-default, redirects, and language codes across all three declaration methods, flagging any disagreement between them — the reciprocity check Search Console's old International Targeting report used to run.

Built by Patrick Stox

Notes: pages are fetched as Googlebot Smartphone by default (switchable, or bring your own user-agent) — some sites' bot management may challenge or block these fetches. Raw HTML only: hreflang or content injected by JavaScript needs a rendering browser and is not seen. Content-language detection covers ~30 major languages; pages in other languages simply aren't language-checked.

Example data — replace with your own, then press Validate cluster

Skip sitemap cross-check Per-URL timeout

Crawls this page's whole hreflang cluster (head tags + Link headers), then also reads the site's XML sitemaps from robots.txt and cross-checks all three sources.

Checks run from our server; we fetch the URL you enter and don't keep the results. Anonymous aggregate outcomes feed our research posts; checked domains are counted once via an anonymized hash, never stored in the clear. Anonymous run-level outcome counters may be used for aggregate research; URLs, domains, IPs, and identifiers are never included, and no statistic is released below 100 runs.

Feedback

Sample report Illustrative example — worked by hand from the rules below, not a live crawl

Say your English homepage, French page, and German page all declare each other, but the French page is missing its return tag pointing back to English. You enter the French URL, whose <head> contains:

<!-- in the <head> of https://example.com/fr/ -->
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://example.com/de/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/" />

…and returns this:

3URLs

9annotations

2reciprocal pairs

1missing returns

0broken targets

declares ↓ target →	en	fr	de
example.com/	—	✓	✓
example.com/fr/	▲	—	✓
example.com/de/	✓	✓	—

✓ reciprocal ▲ declared but no return tag ✕ target broken — self

warning example.com/ example.com/ does not link back to example.com/fr/ — the return tag is missing, so search engines ignore this pair. Fix: Add <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/"> to https://example.com/.

Two of three pairs are reciprocal (green ✓) — those pairings are valid; see what reciprocal / missing / broken mean.
One pairing is one-directional. English lists French, but French doesn't list English back — the matrix shows a yellow ▲ and the issue below names the exact page and the exact tag to add.
One missing tag breaks the whole pairing, not just half of it — Google drops English↔French entirely until the return tag exists, which is why a map across the whole cluster matters more than checking one page at a time.
Building the fix? The Hreflang Cluster Generator writes a self-referencing, bidirectional set so this can't happen in the first place.

Migration variant: an alternate redirects before returning

<!-- stale US annotation -->
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB"
      href="https://shop.example/gb/shoes/" />

<!-- /gb/shoes/ redirects to /uk/shoes/;
     the final UK page returns to the US page from a different URL -->

This is not repaired merely because the redirect reaches a live UK page. Update every cluster member to reference the final /uk/shoes/ URL, confirm that final page self-references, and verify that it returns the exact US alternate. The `.example` URLs are illustrative, not a company finding.

How to use it

Pick a mode. Matched pair fetches exactly two market counterparts; Page URL crawls a live page's whole hreflang cluster; Sitemap URL validates the xhtml:link declarations in an XML sitemap on their own.
Paste one URL — in Page mode, any page in the cluster (e.g. https://example.com/fr/); in Sitemap mode, the sitemap or sitemap-index URL.
Optionally change the user-agent pages are fetched as (Googlebot Smartphone by default), or in Page mode add a sitemap URL to cross-check.
Press Validate cluster. The tool follows every alternate, fetches each page, and cross-checks head tags, Link headers, and sitemaps.
Read the stat strip, then switch between the graph and matrix views and open the Issues list — export it as CSV.

What this result means ↓

International ecommerce pair mode

Compare two regional equivalents for canonical, hreflang, language, market facts, link leakage, and structured data. Identical product descriptions are recorded without being failed.

What the results mean

The stat strip counts the cluster; each pairing (edge) resolves to one of three states:

Reciprocal pair (green ✓) — both pages list each other. This pairing is valid; Google will honour it. Redirected-but-still-reciprocal pairs count here with a note.
Missing return (yellow ▲) — page A declares B, but B does not link back to A. The pairing is ignored until the return tag is added.
Broken target (red ✕) — an alternate points at a URL that returns a non-200 or can't be fetched, so every hreflang aimed at it is dead.

Issues below the map carry one of three severities:

error — breaks the cluster: an invalid or region-only language code, a relative href, two conflicting x-default targets, or the same locale declared twice.
error — a missing return tag, a broken alternate, or a sitemap/head/header disagreement.
warning — a canonical/noindex conflict or another non-fatal inconsistency. Missing self-references are notes. The validator does not require x-default; it is optional.
note — informational: a reciprocal pair that resolves through a redirect, a cross-domain cluster, a deprecated-but-tolerated code, or a language that doesn't match the page's detected text.

How it works

Fetching is the only server-side part. Your browser calls a small endpoint (/api/hreflang-check) that requests one URL as the chosen crawler user-agent, follows redirects, and returns just the extracted facts — status, self-reference, annotations, <html lang>, Content-Language, canonical. The browser then drives the crawl: it seeds with your URL and queues every newly referenced alternate, fetching up to six at a time until the whole connected cluster is mapped (capped at 500 URLs).

All the validation runs client-side. Once the pages are in, it builds the cluster graph, resolves each declared href (accounting for redirects), marks every edge reciprocal / missing-return / broken, then layers on self-reference, x-default, language-code, and three-source-agreement checks. In Page mode it also pulls the site's sitemaps and merges their xhtml:link annotations so head, header, and sitemap declarations are cross-checked against each other.

Features

Full-cluster crawl from a single URL — follows alternates up to 500 pages, six concurrent fetches.
Fast matched-pair mode, optional sitemap skipping, queued/active progress, per-URL timeouts, and cancellation.
Return-tag reciprocity across all three declaration methods (head tags, Link headers, sitemap xhtml:link), flagging any disagreement between them.
Interactive graph and matrix views, with a picker when the crawl finds several separate clusters.
Self-reference, conflicting x-default, redirect-through-alternate, and separate mobile-URL (m-dot) checks. x-default itself remains optional.
ISO 639-1 / 3166-1 language-code validation, plus content-language detection for ~30 major languages.
Choice of crawler user-agent (Googlebot, Bingbot, YandexBot, and more) or your own; SVG/PNG graph export and CSV issue export.
Sitemap-only mode for validating an XML sitemap's declarations without fetching pages.

Limitations

Pages are fetched as raw HTML — hreflang or content injected by JavaScript is not seen and will be reported as missing. Bot management on some sites may challenge or block the fetches. Content-language detection covers ~30 major languages; pages in other languages simply aren't language-checked. The crawl caps at 500 URLs and reads the first 20 child sitemaps, and Sitemap mode validates only what the sitemap declares (it doesn't fetch the pages, so an on-page return tag will still read as missing there).

Frequently asked questions

What is an hreflang return tag?

A return tag is the reciprocal hreflang linkIf page A lists page B as an alternate, B must list A back — or Google ignores the pair.. If page A lists page B as an alternate, page B must list page A back — otherwise Google ignores the pairing entirely. returntag crawls every page in the cluster and checks that each declared alternate links back, so a missing return tag on any single page shows up on the map instead of silently breaking the whole set.

Does this replace Search Console’s International Targeting report?

It replaces the "no return tags" errors that report used to surface. Google retired the International Targeting report in 2022, so there is no longer a first-party place to see missing hreflang return tags. returntag runs the same reciprocity check against a live crawl of the cluster, plus x-defaultx-default is the reserved hreflang value that points to a fallback URL — the page Google shows when a user's locale doesn't match any of your other hreflang tags. It is optional and does not mean "English.", self-reference, redirect, and language-code validation on top.

Why does the tool crawl other pages instead of just the one I entered?

Reciprocity can only be verified by reading both ends of every pair. When you enter one URL, returntag follows its hreflang annotationsHreflang is an annotation (in HTML, HTTP headers, or XML sitemaps) that tells search engines which language and optional region a page targets, and which alternate versions exist. It only works when every page in the cluster references all the others. to each alternate, fetches those pages too, and keeps expanding until the whole connected cluster is mapped (up to 500 URLs). That is the only way to know whether the return tags actually exist on the other pages.

Can it check hreflang declared in an XML sitemap?

Yes. In Page URL mode it also reads the site’s sitemaps (from robots.txtA plain-text file at the root of a host that tells crawlers which URLs they may and may not request. It controls crawling, not indexing — a blocked URL can still be indexed if it's linked from elsewhere., or one you supply) and cross-checks all three declaration methods — head tags, HTTP Link headers, and sitemap xhtml:link — flagging any disagreement. Sitemap URL mode validates the sitemap’s declarations on their own without fetching the pages.

Does it see hreflang added by JavaScript?

No. Pages are fetched as raw HTML (as Googlebot Smartphone by default), so hreflang tags or content injected client-side by JavaScript are not seen. If your alternates are rendered by JS, this tool will report them as missing — validate the rendered HTML separately.

Next stepSEO Incident Simulator — practice the same investigation on labeled fixtures.

Feature requests for Returntag

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Common issues & how to fix them

Error Alternate page is missing its reciprocal return tag Fix: Add the source page to the target page’s hreflang set with the matching locale so the alternate relationship is reciprocal.
Warning Page is missing a self-referencing hreflang Fix: Add a self-referencing hreflang entry using the page’s own locale and canonical URL.
Error hreflang code is invalid Fix: Replace the hreflang value with a valid language code, optionally followed by a valid region using a hyphen, or use x-default.
Warning Page declares the same locale more than once Fix: Keep one canonical alternate URL for the locale on that page and remove the duplicate declaration.
Error Alternate target is not a live 2xx page Fix: Restore the alternate URL to a crawlable 2xx response or replace it everywhere in the cluster with a live localized page.
Warning Alternate target redirects Fix: Update every hreflang reference to the redirect’s final 2xx URL and make that final URL self-reference.
Error Alternate target canonicalizes elsewhere Fix: Align the alternate’s canonical with its own hreflang URL, or remove that alternate if it is intentionally canonicalized to another page.
Error Pages disagree on cluster membership Fix: Make every page in the intended language cluster publish the same complete set of alternate URLs and reciprocal locale codes.
Information Cluster has no x-default page Fix: Add the same x-default URL to every member of the cluster, usually pointing to a locale selector or global default.