diff --git a/tests/functional/test_link_hreflang_tags.py b/tests/functional/test_link_hreflang_tags.py
index 146cb64c2bc..35deb9b020d 100644
--- a/tests/functional/test_link_hreflang_tags.py
+++ b/tests/functional/test_link_hreflang_tags.py
@@ -21,4 +21,4 @@ def test_link_hreflang_tags(url, locales, base_url):
         full_url = '{}/{}{}'.format(base_url, locale, url)
         link_url = '{}/{}{}'.format('https://www.mozilla.org', locale, url)
         resp = requests.get(full_url, timeout=5)
-        assert LINK_TEMPLATE.format(url=link_url) in resp.content
+        assert LINK_TEMPLATE.format(url=link_url).encode('utf-8') in resp.content