Google: Hreflang Tags With 301 Redirects Are Probably Okay

Apr 7, 2025 - 7:11 am 1 by

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Google's John Mueller said if you have hreflang tags that point to a 301 redirect, it is probably okay. But you probably also want to automate the process of setting up those hreflang tags so that there is no redirect.

Matt Coughlan asked the question on Mastodon:

Back in 2018 you tweeted about hreflang tags needing to point to 200 status pages. Is that still relevant today? After a global migration ours is a bit hit and miss, with many cases where we link to pages which 301 to their new home. Could we consider those broken, or will Google handle it?

Here is what John Mueller from Google responded with on Mastodon:

If they 301 it's probably ok, but ... it sounds like it might be worth figuring out how to automate it so that you don't need to manually track & tweak these. Clean links make tracking with tools easier, and reduce chances of "miscanonicalization" (not a ranking issue, but tracking is challenging)

Yes, some people are still on Mastodon.

Forum discussion at Mastodon.

 

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