Hreflang
Hreflang Implementation Library
Hreflang tells search engines which language and country each version of a page is for. These guides cover how to write it, audit it and fix it on casino and sportsbook sites, where every targeted country also has to be a licensed one.
Google supports three equivalent ways to declare alternates: link tags, HTTP headers and XML sitemaps. Whichever you choose, the same rules apply: every version lists itself and every other version, return links must exist in both directions, and values follow ISO 639-1 for language and ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 for region. Start with the checklist if you are auditing a live site, or with the reference below if you are writing tags for the first time.
Guides
Hreflang
Hreflang Audit Checklist for Casino and Sportsbook Sites
A twelve-point hreflang audit for casino and sportsbook sites covering language and region codes, x-default, self and return links, identical sets, canonicals, translated content, delivery method, market eligibility and Spain's .es rule.
Hreflang
Diagnosing Hreflang Errors and Wrong-Country Rankings
A diagnosis sequence for wrong-locale results on casino and sportsbook sites that separates annotation errors from canonical conflicts, crawl access problems, untranslated content and plain ranking competition, without claiming more than the data supports.
Hreflang
Language Switchers, Geo Redirects and What Googlebot Sees
Guidance on language selectors, automatic redirects and geo-blocking for licensed gambling sites, reconciling Google's advice against IP-based adaptation with legal duties such as Spain's .es redirect rule, and keeping market pages crawlable without cloaking.
Tool
Hreflang Checker and Tag Generator
A browser-only hreflang workbench that validates ISO 639-1 language codes, ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 region codes, x-default, duplicates and URL format, flags market notes for Spain's .es rule and Québec French, and generates HTML link tags, an HTTP Link header and sitemap XML, with a CSV report and regression tests.
Quick reference: values for the four markets
Valid values for the locales this site covers, and the mistakes we see most often. Matching ignores case, but lowercase language and uppercase region is the usual convention.
| Audience | Use | Avoid | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| English speakers in Great Britain | en-GB | en-UK, uk | GB is the ISO 3166-1 code; uk is the language code for Ukrainian |
| German speakers in Germany | de-DE | ger, de-GER | Google supports two-letter ISO 639-1 language codes and two-letter regions |
| Spanish speakers in Spain | es-ES | es alone, sp | es alone targets Spanish speakers everywhere; sp is not a language code |
| English speakers in Canada | en-CA | ca | ca is the language code for Catalan |
| French speakers in Canada | fr-CA | fr-QC | QC is not an ISO 3166-1 country code |
| Catalan speakers in Spain | ca-ES | cat | Three-letter codes are outside Google's supported list |
| Everyone else | x-default | default, x-def | x-default is the reserved value |
Check your own list on the hreflang workbench. It runs these rules in your browser and fetches nothing.
Three rules people get wrong
- Return links. Google ignores a pair of tags unless both pages point to each other (checks 4 to 7).
- Canonicals. Each version's canonical should be in its own language (checks 8 and 9).
- Language detection. Google reads the visible content, not hreflang or the lang attribute, to detect language (translation QA).
Questions
Is hreflang required for a multilingual site?
No. Google says it may find alternate versions without annotations, but that annotations help it point users to the most appropriate version by language or region.
Which hreflang method should I use?
Google treats link tags, HTTP headers and sitemaps as equivalent. Use the one your platform can keep consistent. HTTP headers suit non-HTML files such as PDFs.
Does hreflang work in Bing?
Bing's own published guidance on country and language, from 2011, describes the content-language meta tag and country-code domains rather than hreflang. Check Bing Webmaster Tools' current documentation before relying on either method there.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page, last updated September 21, 2026.
- Google Search Central, How to specify a canonical with rel="canonical" and other methods, last updated July 10, 2026.
- Bing Webmaster Blog, How to tell Bing your website's country and language, March 2011.
- W3C Internationalization, Language tags in HTML and XML, no date shown.