Yandex no longer reads language versions from the sitemap; localised pages are declared with alternate link markup on the page itself.
Getting it right
- Every language version links to every other, including itself.
- Language and region codes must be valid.
- The declared alternate must actually serve that language.
Why errors are invisible
Bad hreflang validates, ranks, and serves the wrong language to the wrong market for months without any alert.
Alien Road
How we apply this
We verify return tags as a monitored check rather than a launch task, and we note the sitemap change specifically — teams that set this up years ago may still be relying on a method Yandex has dropped.
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