Google Search results reportedly shift from direct URLs to opaque /goto links
SoftwareUnverifiedUpdated:
In logged-out and private Google Search sessions, organic-result links are reportedly being rewritten to google.com/goto redirects instead of providing destination URLs directly in the HTML.
Redirected result links in logged-out sessions
The article says the pattern became consistent by late August 2026 in logged-out and private browsing, though it may still be an experiment. It says its own search pipeline was updated to resolve the redirects and return destination URLs.
Google Search result HTML previously exposed destination URLs directly, or used an older google.com/url wrapper whose target was readable in its query string.
The new links reportedly point to /goto with an opaque url parameter. To obtain the final address, a client must request the redirect endpoint and inspect its Location header rather than decode the parameter offline.
If destinations cannot be read from the HTML, software processing search results must change how it obtains them. The article describes requesting each redirect while leaving open the possibility that the behavior is experimental.
Sources
- Hacker NewsGoogle no longer provides direct URLs in search resultsRead source →