What is hreflang?
hreflang is neither a command nor a redirect, it is a mapping. Every language version of a page lists all the versions in its head section, itself included, and Google reads from that they are the same page in a different language. Redirect visitors automatically instead and you lose precisely that mapping, because only one version stays reachable.
Three things have to be right for the annotation to work. First the self-reference: every version lists itself. Second the return link: Google states that annotations are ignored if two pages do not point at each other. Third the language code in ISO 639-1, optionally extended by a region in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2, where reserved codes such as `UK`, `EU` and `UN` have no effect according to Google. The frequently typed `en-uk` therefore does nothing, the correct form is `en-gb`.
Two distinctions save a lot of trouble. hreflang is not a 301 redirect: a redirect replaces one address permanently, hreflang places two equal addresses side by side. And hreflang does not replace a canonical: every language version stays its own canonical page, otherwise it drops out of the index. Google works out the language from the visible text anyway, not from the `lang` attribute and not from the folder in the address.
Why does hreflang matter?
On 10 September 2026 we fetched the home pages of the 20 ATX companies. All twenty serve a page under a second language address, 13 carry any hreflang annotation, and only 4 satisfy self-reference, return link and x-default at once. The annotation costs an hour of work once, its absence costs visibility in the second language permanently.
hreflang in practice
- 01`/leistungen` carries a link to `/en/services` and one to itself, and the English page carries the same two links in mirror image.
- 02An additional entry with the value `x-default` names the version visitors land on when no language setting matches.
- 03Instead of a redirect by browser language, the page carries a visible language switch as an ordinary link, so both versions stay crawlable.
