Why it matters
The three methods are equivalent; combining them brings no benefit in Search and is harder to manage, and Google often sees sites using two or three methods at once with conflicting annotations. The HTTP header suits non-HTML files such as PDFs, and the sitemap suits large sites.
How to meet it
Choose one method per site (or per file type), remove leftovers from plug-ins and earlier implementations, and keep the annotations consistent with the canonicals.
How to test it
A crawl finds annotations in only one source per URL, and the hreflang sets from that source are complete.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided from one URL.
An audit reads the response, the headers, the HTML, robots.txt, the sitemaps and the structured data, and the finding shows the evidence it saw.
Sources
Google documents01
Claims in the knowledge base03
- D2-C568ConsistentFocusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationSaid on stage
- D2-C569SourceFocusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationGoogle's documentation
- D2-C567ConfirmedFocusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationSaid on stage
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Confirmed
- Google's documentation states the same thing.
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.