We’ve only covered the Department of Justice vs Google documents here and there but here are some documents that may be of interest to the community here.

Ryan Moulton, a Google Search engineer who worked on Google’s search rankings algorithms for over 18 years now, went to X to call out some of what the courts are saying as not true. He went on to say, “This is now the second time I’ve seen my work cited prominently in a major lawsuit against Google, and I have to say, it has not given me a lot of faith in the court process around issues like this.”

Google’s John Mueller explained that just because you use hreflang tags on your pages, it doesn’t mean those pages will be indexed and/or ranked in Google Search. He said on Bluesky, “hreflang doesn’t guarantee indexing.”

%excerpt%
Read the rest here:
Say Hello to Your MozCon 2025 Speaker Lineup (So Far!)

Join us for this webinar as we introduce the TotalSERP strategy, a unified approach designed to help you reclaim visibility across the entire search landscape. The post Cracking the SEO Code: Regain Control of Search Visibility in the Age of AI [Webinar] appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s AI Overviews link back to Google 43% of the time, furthering its walled garden effect, according to new data. The post Google Links To Itself: 43% Of AI Overviews Point Back To Google appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

U.S.

Google’s updated image SEO best practices recommend using consistent URLs for images across your site to preserve crawl budget. The post Google Updates Image SEO Best Practices: Use Consistent URLs appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s John Mueller explains that Hreflang tags act as suggestions, not directives. Learn how canonical tags impact international SEO and what adjustments your strategy needs. The post Google Reminds That Hreflang Tags Are Hints, Not Directives appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…