Can hreflang links use relative URLs?

Definition: No. For hreflang annotations, Google requires every alternate URL to be fully qualified, including its transport method, such as https://example.com/fr/page. A path-relative URL such as /fr/page and a protocol-relative URL such as //example.com/fr/page do not meet that documented requirement.

Key facts

• Google's localized versions documentation says alternate URLs must include http or https.
• Each language version must list itself and every other language version. The same documentation says Google ignores tags when two pages do not point to each other.
• Google’s link best practices show /products/category/shoes and ./products/category/shoes as parseable URLs in ordinary <a> elements.
• The link guidance concerns crawlable <a href> elements, whereas the fully qualified rule is in Google’s hreflang guidance for alternate URLs.
• RFC 3986 defines a relative reference as a reference resolved against another hierarchical URI.

Why the answer is no for hreflang

hreflang is an annotation that tells Google which pages are language or regional variations of the same content. Google's localized versions documentation lists HTML, HTTP headers and sitemaps as the three ways to indicate those variants. Across all three methods, it says that alternate URLs must be fully qualified, including the transport method.

The page gives this example:

https://example.com/foo

It places //example.com/foo and /foo beside that example as forms that do not satisfy the requirement. The restriction therefore applies to the URL value, whether the annotation appears in a <link> element, an HTTP header or a sitemap entry. It is a rule about hreflang alternate URLs, rather than a general statement that every URL on a website must contain a scheme.

What fully qualified means

In this context, a fully qualified URL includes a scheme such as https and the rest of the address needed to identify the alternate page. Google's HTML syntax uses an href value for the page URL, and its table describes url_of_page as “The fully-qualified URL for the version of this page for the specified language/region.”

The distinction matters because URI syntax permits relative references. RFC 3986 says that a relative reference is resolved against a base URI, and it identifies //example.com/foo as a network-path reference and /foo as an absolute-path reference. Those forms can be meaningful in a document with a defined base, but Google’s hreflang instruction asks for the resolved, fully qualified address in the annotation.

An HTML implementation can therefore look like this:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/page" />

What to check on a site

For each localized page, inspect the generated hreflang set and read every href value as a complete URL. Google says each language version must list itself and all other language versions, and the set of links in the HTML method is identical for every version of the page. The reciprocal links must also point to the actual localized URLs.

This check is separate from ordinary navigation. Google’s link documentation marks both /products/category/shoes and ./products/category/shoes as examples it can parse in an <a href> element. RFC 3986 explains that such references depend on a base URI, while Google’s hreflang documentation requires the alternate URL to include http or https.

Related terms

• hreflang
• Canonical URL
• Crawlable internal links

FAQ

Can you use /fr/page in an hreflang tag?

No. Google’s localized versions documentation gives /foo as an example beside the fully qualified form and requires the transport method in the alternate URL.

Can you use //example.com/fr/page instead?

No. Google gives a protocol-relative URL beginning with // as another form excluded by the fully qualified URL rule.

Are relative URLs always unsuitable for Google?

No. Google’s link guidance shows root-relative and path-relative URLs as parseable values in ordinary <a> elements. That guidance does not change the separate hreflang requirement.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Localized Versions of your Pages", 21 September 2026
2. Google Search Central, "Link best practices for Google", 10 December 2025
3. IETF, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", January 2005

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