Hreflang Cleaner

FAQ — Hreflang Cleaner

Common merchant questions about how Hreflang Cleaner works, Shopify limitations, and deployment.

What does Hreflang Cleaner actually do?

The app injects clean hreflang tags into the <head> of every page on your store (homepage, product, collection, article, blog, page, cart, search, policies…), using only the market × language combinations you have explicitly selected. For these tags to replace Shopify Markets' tags (which emits every cartesian combination by default, including irrelevant ones like fr-ae on an English-speaking UAE market), you must first ask Shopify support to disable native hreflang — that's step 1 of Setup. Without that step, the app's tags coexist with Shopify's and create duplicates (the Dashboard shows an alert in that case).

How much does Hreflang Cleaner cost?

29 EUR per month with a 14-day free trial. Single flat plan — all features included regardless of catalog size or number of markets. You can uninstall at any time from your Shopify admin; the subscription cancels with the uninstall.

How do I turn off Shopify's native hreflang tags?

Right from your admin: Online Store → Preferences → Social sharing and SEO → Automatic hreflang tags (setting introduced by Shopify in July 2026 — it previously required a support ticket). Until it's off you have duplicate tags — the app detects this and alerts you via the daily health check.

Why a 24h delay on synchronization?

The app does not trigger a real-time re-sync on creates or edits. All resource types (products, collections, articles, blogs, pages) are caught up by a daily cron (≤24h). This is intentional: it guarantees the same mechanic for 20 or 200,000 resources, with no two code paths. Real-time webhooks are reserved for events that can't tolerate a 24h lag: product and collection deletions (the app purges orphan metafields immediately), theme publication (we re-check whether the block is active on the new theme), and locale changes on your Shopify Markets configuration. Articles, blogs and pages have no webhook on Shopify's side, so their deletions are also caught up by the cron.

How can I preview without impacting SEO?

Enable Test mode in Setup. Hreflang tags are then emitted as HTML comments () — no search engine sees them. You can verify the rendering via your browser inspector. Propagation to the storefront takes 1-2 minutes (Shopify CDN cache) after toggling.

What to do if I add a market or language in Shopify Markets?

The app does not auto-reconfigure tags when you add a market, locale, or domain — the list of "checked" pairs is intentionally explicit (not every combination makes SEO sense). After a change in your Markets configuration, go back to step 2 of Setup, check the new pairs that make sense, then click Save. The sync runs again automatically and publishes the new tags within 24h.

Does the app work on large catalogs (50k, 200k products)?

Yes. The sync uses Shopify bulk operations (one query for the whole catalog) with a cost-based rate limiter, a hash no-op system (skip if nothing changed), and checkpoint resume on crash. A full sync on 200k resources takes around 2-4h depending on the Shopify plan (Standard or Plus). The daily cron runs within the 24h window without issue.

How can I tell if the block is active on my theme?

The Dashboard hero stats display the current block state on your published theme. Publishing a new theme is detected in real time via webhook: the hero stat switches to alert and a banner asks you to re-enable the block on the new theme (Shopify does not carry app embed activation across themes). A manual block disable in the theme editor is detected by the daily health check — so with a latency of up to 24h.

What data does the app collect?

The app stores in database: your shop domain, a Shopify access token (standard for all Shopify apps, required to call the API on your behalf — automatically revoked on uninstall), your market × language matrix, sync history (duration, modified resources, errors) and metafield hashes used for no-op skipping. No end-customer data, no orders, no contact info — the app neither has the scope nor the logic to read those. The full Privacy Policy is published at the URL listed on the App Store page.

What happens if I uninstall the app?

On uninstall, Shopify automatically removes the theme app extension from your theme: the block disappears from the <head> and hreflang tags are no longer rendered. Metafields written on your resources (hreflang.urls, hreflang.config) are not deleted by Shopify and remain on your products, collections, pages, articles, and blogs — without SEO impact since nothing reads them anymore. You can delete them manually via the Shopify admin or GraphQL if you want a complete cleanup. Native Shopify Markets hreflang tags remain disabled until you contact support to re-enable them.

How do I get help?

Contact us through the support channel listed on the Shopify App Store page for Hreflang Cleaner. We aim to respond within 24 working hours. This FAQ also lives at the public URL you'll find on the listing — feel free to share it with your team or with Shopify support agents when you reach out.