{
  "schemaVersion": "crawler-atlas-1",
  "atlasVersion": "atlas-2026-07-28-v1",
  "canonical": "/atlas/hreflang",
  "title": "hreflang alternates",
  "category": {
    "slug": "directives",
    "title": "Crawler and indexing directives"
  },
  "definition": "hreflang annotations connect language or regional variants of substantially equivalent content.",
  "mechanism": "Each variant names itself and its alternates using valid language-region codes, often with an optional x-default fallback.",
  "validation": "Verify reciprocal annotations, canonical consistency, return status, and exact URL normalization across every member of the alternate set.",
  "commonFailure": "Pointing every localized page at one canonical language can undermine the alternate cluster the hreflang annotations were meant to describe.",
  "related": [
    "/atlas/canonical-links",
    "/atlas/sitemap-discovery"
  ],
  "modified": "2026-07-28"
}