What is Hreflang?
Hreflang is an HTML or sitemap annotation that tells Google which language or regional version of a page to show to which audience, such as en-IN for India, en-GB for the United Kingdom or ar for Arabic speakers. For Indian hospitals it matters when running separate pages for international patients or for Hindi and other Indian language content.
Why it matters for hospitals
Hospitals that serve medical value travel patients often create country versions of treatment and estimate pages. Without hreflang, Google may show the domestic page to a patient in Nairobi or Dhaka, or treat the versions as duplicates. Regional language pages face the same issue.
How to put it into practice
- Only use hreflang when you have genuinely different language or country versions, not copies with a changed heading.
- Make annotations reciprocal: each version must list all the others and itself.
- Use correct codes, such as hi for Hindi or en-AE for English in the UAE, and add an x-default page.
- Keep each version’s canonical pointing to itself, not to the main language page.
- Validate after every new language or country launch.
The common mistake
Adding hreflang to machine-translated pages that nobody reviewed, so the right patients reach the right URL and find content they cannot trust.
An illustrative example
A hospital’s international desk ran English pages for India, the Gulf and East Africa with different contact numbers and package details. Proper hreflang meant Gulf patients saw the Gulf version with the right WhatsApp number. (Composite example, not a specific hospital.)
Related terms
Further reading
Part of the healthcare growth and digital glossary. Last reviewed 7 October 2026.