Google is depreciating the International Targeting report, which means that it's now over to you to
monitor and check your hreflang markup is all in good working order.
And check you should, because it's a tricky beast to manage sometimes, and things can and do get mixed up!
So here's a quick collection of tools I've used that can help you check and monitor.
Crawlers
Tools you can configure to crawl your site(s) and check hreflang is in place
Screaming Frog
Can check hreflang both in the head, and in sitemaps, and produces a useful report, find out more here on their How To Audit Hreflang Using The SEO Spider article.
Sitebulb
Crawling software, along the lines of Screaming Frog, also offers great International reporting, find out more on their Validate your hreflang to enhance your international SEO article.
Deepcrawl
If you need to pull out the big guns for crawling, Deepcrawl offers hreflang reporting as part of their crawler, a bit more here: Testing hreflang with Deepcrawl - useful charts and reports
One-off checkers
Merkle's technicalseo.com Tool
I tend to use this one to spot-check a few URLs, but it's a handy tool and best of all, it's FREE! Can test HTML & HTTP headers, and sitemap implementations, you can try it out here: hreflang Tags Testing Tool
Monitoring
All these tools are great but work after the fact, i.e. you need to go crawl your site with them (although scheduling is possible with Screaming Frog, Sitebulb & Deepcrawl!)
To replace the functionality of the International Targeting report, you need a monitor.
Content King
The only one I've used that reports on hreflang is the ever brilliant Content King, which ongoing monitors and proactively looks for issues, including hreflang. I know it works for html headers, not sure if it works with sitemap / HTTP headers. You can find out more here: Audit your hreflang implementation.
I'm sure there are a ton of other useful tools and services out there, let me know if you have a favourite I've missed here, perhaps over on Twitter
Community Recommendations
- Jay Ratkowski, over on Twitter, recommends OnCrawl (https://help.oncrawl.com/en/articles/1479694-hreflangs-and-translated-pages)
- Patrick Stox of ahrefs has pointed out that their Site audit tool covers hreflang, and supports header, head and sitemaps. https://ahrefs.com/blog/hreflang-tags/#how-to-find-and-fix-hreflang-issues
- Orit Mutznik, recommended on Twitter a chrome extension from Adapt Worldwide: Hreflang Tag Checker
- Gianna ˈdʒanna Brachetti-Truskawa mentions on Twitter that Audisto offers excellent auditing and monitoring for hreflang https://audisto.com/crawler/hreflang/