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How to check the hreflang tags on your Shopify store

Christopher Uryga ยท October 2026

If your store sells in more than one language or country, every page should tell search engines which version is for whom. Here is where those tags come from on Shopify, how to check them in two minutes, and what the common problems mean.

What hreflang tags do

A hreflang tag is a line in a page's <head> that says "this page also exists in another language or for another region, at this address". A store selling in English and French to the United States and Canada might have four versions of its home page, and each one lists all four.

Search engines use these tags to show a shopper the version meant for them: the French page to someone searching in French in Canada, the English page to someone in the United States. They are a hint, not a command, and they don't change how highly a page ranks. They change which of your pages is shown.

Where Shopify's tags come from

Shopify adds hreflang tags for you. They come from a setting called Automatic hreflang tags (Online Store > Preferences, in the social sharing image and SEO section), and they are built from your Markets and published languages.

Shopify prints these tags itself, as part of the code every theme loads in the head. That has two consequences. Your theme can't edit them, so the only control you have is that setting: on or off. And anything else that also prints hreflang tags (a theme snippet, a translation app, an SEO app) adds a second set rather than replacing Shopify's.

Check yours in two minutes

The quick way: enter your home page, or any product page, in our free hreflang checker. It lists every tag on the page, opens the pages they point to, and tells you which rules are broken. Nothing to install.

By hand: open a page of your store in a browser, view its source (Ctrl+U on Windows, Option+Command+U on a Mac), and search for hreflang. For the store above, the home page should show something like this:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://yourstore.com/">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-US" href="https://yourstore.com/fr">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-CA" href="https://yourstore.com/en-ca">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://yourstore.com/fr-ca">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yourstore.com/">

Three things to look for: one tag per language and market version, full addresses starting with https://, and the page listing itself. Then open one of the other versions and check that it lists the same set. Checking by hand gets slow past a few pages, which is what the checker is for.

If your store still has a password, neither the checker nor a search engine can see its tags. Check again once the password is off.

Six common problems

1. Two sets of tags

The page carries Shopify's automatic tags and a second set from a theme snippet or an app. The two often disagree (one uses fr, the other fr-CA), and search engines are left to guess. Keep one source: if something else prints your tags, turn off Automatic hreflang tags; if nothing else should, remove the snippet or the app's hreflang feature. Our guide to duplicate hreflang tags on Shopify shows how to tell the sources apart.

2. Pages that don't link back

The English page lists the French one, but the French page doesn't list the English one. Google's rule is that both pages must point at each other; a one-way pair is ignored. This usually happens when two sources print tags on different pages, or when one market's site is set up separately from the others.

3. Alternates that redirect

A tag points at an address that redirects somewhere else: yourstore.com to www.yourstore.com, or an English product handle on a French URL that Shopify redirects to the translated handle. Tags should point at the final address. On Shopify, this is often a sign the tags were written by hand or by a tool that doesn't know your translated URLs or your primary domain.

4. Alternates that are hidden or missing

A tag points at a page that returns a 404, or that says noindex. On Shopify, one cause is a product that isn't available in one market but is still listed for it. Remove that market from the product's tags, or make the product available there.

5. A canonical that points elsewhere

The page has hreflang tags, but its canonical tag names a different page. Google expects hreflang only on pages that are their own canonical, so these tags may be ignored. Check the theme's canonical tag and any SEO app that changes it.

6. Codes Google doesn't recognise

Language codes are two letters (en, fr), optionally followed by a two-letter country code (en-GB, fr-CA). A common slip is en-UK: the country code for the United Kingdom is GB. There should also be one x-default per set, the page for everyone else, not two different ones.

Fixing what you find

Start with where the tags come from. If the only tags on your pages are Shopify's and the checker finds nothing, there is nothing to fix. If you find a second set, decide which source to keep and remove the other. If the problems are in the addresses themselves (redirects, missing translated handles, products listed in markets where they aren't sold), the source producing them needs to know more about your store than it does.

That last case is why we built Hreflang Manager. It builds one set of tags from your markets, languages, translated URLs and product availability, adds them through a theme app embed, and audits a sample of your live pages against the rules above, naming the fix for each problem. It has a free plan.

Whatever you use, check again after a change. Shopify caches pages, so a setting change can take a minute or two to show.

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