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Rule · Localization

hreflang includes the page itself and is reciprocated

SEO-I18N-02C1 Mechanism· w8

Class
C1 Mechanism
Weight
8
Severity on fail
critical
Applies to
Google

Test this rule on a live site with the hreflang checker. Free, no account needed.

Scope and evidence

Evaluated on pages in P with annotations. The book marks this requirement REQUIRED, SEARCH-ENGINE-SPECIFIC.

Google allows omitting some languages on some pages and still processes the pairs that point to each other, so reciprocity is judged pair by pair; the finding lists only the broken pairs. Targets that do not return 200 are reported by SEO-I18N-09.

Fail conditions

Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.

  • missing_self

    The hreflang annotations for {url} do not include the page itself. Google requires each language version to list itself as well as all other language versions.

  • not_reciprocated

    {url} names {target} as its {code} version, but {target} does not point back. Google ignores hreflang annotations when two pages don't both point to each other.

The documented fix

Generate every member's annotations from one translation-group record so all members carry the identical, complete set.

Sources, quoted

These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.