Hreflang uses relative URL: what it is, why it matters, and how to fix it

One or more hreflang annotations use relative URLs instead of absolute URLs. Google requires hreflang href values to be fully qualified absolute URLs.

Google explicitly states that hreflang URLs must be fully qualified, including the protocol. Relative URLs in hreflang annotations will be ignored, breaking your international SEO targeting and potentially causing the wrong language version to be served to users.

Update all hreflang href values to use absolute URLs including https:// and the full domain name.

This is a medium-severity issue: individually modest, but it compounds — dozens of medium issues across hundreds of pages add up to a real quality deficit in how search engines assess the site. It belongs to the indexability family of checks.

Run a free Dr Urls audit: it crawls your site, detects hreflang uses relative url on every affected page, shows example URLs, and generates a ready-to-use fix task. Re-scan after fixing to verify the issue is gone.