Hreflang Codes

Language and region codes for hreflang, with mistakes to avoid.

An hreflang value tells search engines which language, and optionally which country, a page is for. It starts with a two-letter ISO 639-1 language code such as en, de or ja, optionally followed by a hyphen and a two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 region code such as GB, CH or JP. Google also accepts an ISO 15924 script code for languages written in more than one script, such as zh-Hans and zh-Hant, and the special value x-default for the page to show when nothing else matches.

Most hreflang problems come from a few mistakes: using UK instead of GB, a region code on its own, underscores instead of hyphens, codes Google doesn't support such as es-419, and annotations that only point one way. Every page in a set must list every other page and itself, with absolute URLs to indexable pages that return 200. Codes are not case-sensitive, but the convention is lowercase languages and uppercase regions.

Filter codes

114 entries

Example values

hreflang	Means
en	English, for users anywhere
en-GB	English, for users in the United Kingdom
en-US	English, for users in the United States
es-MX	Spanish, for users in Mexico
de-CH	German, for users in Switzerland
fr-CA	French, for users in Canada
pt-BR	Portuguese, for users in Brazil
zh-Hans	Chinese in Simplified script (ISO 15924 script code)
zh-Hant-TW	Chinese in Traditional script, for users in Taiwan
x-default	The fallback page when no other language or region matches, such as a language picker

Common mistakes

Wrong	Right	Why
en-UK	en-GB	The ISO 3166-1 code for the United Kingdom is GB. UK isn't a valid region code.
GB	en-GB	A region on its own isn't allowed: the language always comes first.
en_US	en-US	Separate the parts with a hyphen, not an underscore.
eu, es-419	A list of country codes	Google only supports ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 regions, so EU and UN M.49 codes such as 419 (Latin America) aren't supported.
jp	ja (Japanese)	jp is the country code for Japan. The language code is ja; ja-JP is language plus region.
One-way annotations	Links in both directions	If page A lists page B, page B must list page A, or the annotations may be ignored.
Missing self-reference	Each page lists itself too	Every version should include a link to itself alongside the others.
Relative URLs	Absolute URLs	Use the full URL with protocol and domain, for example https://example.com/de/.
Pointing at redirects or noindex pages	The final, indexable URL	Each URL should return 200 and be the canonical version of that page.

Language codes (ISO 639-1)

The first part of every hreflang value.

Code	Language
ar	Arabic
bg	Bulgarian
bn	Bengali
ca	Catalan
cs	Czech
cy	Welsh
da	Danish
de	German
el	Greek
en	English
es	Spanish
et	Estonian
fa	Persian
fi	Finnish
fr	French
ga	Irish
he	Hebrew
hi	Hindi
hr	Croatian
hu	Hungarian
id	Indonesian
is	Icelandic
it	Italian
ja	Japanese
ko	Korean
lt	Lithuanian
lv	Latvian
ms	Malay
mt	Maltese
nb	Norwegian Bokmål
nl	Dutch
no	Norwegian
pl	Polish
pt	Portuguese
ro	Romanian
ru	Russian
sk	Slovak
sl	Slovenian
sr	Serbian
sv	Swedish
sw	Swahili
ta	Tamil
th	Thai
tr	Turkish
uk	Ukrainian
ur	Urdu
vi	Vietnamese
zh	Chinese

Region codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2)

Optional second part, after a hyphen.

Code	Country or region
AE	United Arab Emirates
AR	Argentina
AT	Austria
AU	Australia
BE	Belgium
BR	Brazil
CA	Canada
CH	Switzerland
CL	Chile
CN	China
CO	Colombia
CZ	Czechia
DE	Germany
DK	Denmark
EG	Egypt
ES	Spain
FI	Finland
FR	France
GB	United Kingdom (not UK)
GR	Greece
HK	Hong Kong
IE	Ireland
IL	Israel
IN	India
IT	Italy
JP	Japan
KR	South Korea
MX	Mexico
MY	Malaysia
NL	Netherlands
NO	Norway
NZ	New Zealand
PE	Peru
PH	Philippines
PL	Poland
PT	Portugal
RO	Romania
SA	Saudi Arabia
SE	Sweden
SG	Singapore
TH	Thailand
TR	Türkiye
TW	Taiwan
UA	Ukraine
US	United States
VN	Vietnam
ZA	South Africa

Good to know

Three ways to add hreflang

Link elements in the HTML head, Link HTTP headers (useful for PDFs), or xhtml:link entries in an XML sitemap. Pick one method per set of pages; mixing them makes errors harder to find.

Hreflang isn't for ranking

hreflang helps Google show the right version to the right user. It doesn't make a page rank higher, and Google may still show another version if it judges it a better match.