Google’s Gary Illyes said that hreflang alternates, hreflang URLs are not “indexed in the proper sense.” In short, Google just keeps the hreflang URL as alternate URLs. So the URL is not what is getting the page indexed, it is just being stores as an alternative to the main page URL.
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Daily Search Forum Recap: May 13, 2025
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
Google Tests Removing Site Names From Search Results
Google is testing removing the site names from the search result snippets and just showing the site’s URL at the top – title link – position of the snippet.
Google Search Rolling Out google.com/goto Tracking Parameters?
Google Search seems like it is rolling out the google.com/goto URL as a passthrough URL within the search results that it began testing in July 2026. This seems like a way for Google to help prevent scraping of its search results by third-party tools and AI companies but Google has not yet commented on this goto URL paramter.
