Google no longer provides direct URLs in search results

Sep 12, 2026 10:14 AM - 1 hour ago 1

What's happening

Google Search is rewriting integrated consequence links to google.com/goto?url=... alternatively of exposing the destination URL straight successful the HTML.

When you click a result, Google redirects you to the existent page. The url parameter uses a custom, Google-specific encoding. It is not a plain base64 of the target URL. In practice, it looks for illustration an opaque reference to Google's scale grounds for that page.

As of precocious August 2026, this is showing up consistently crossed searches erstwhile you are logged retired aliases browsing successful backstage mode. It whitethorn still beryllium an experiment, but it is nary longer constricted to a mini portion of SERPs.

Not the aforesaid arsenic google.com/url

Google has utilized redirect wrappers before. The older format is google.com/url?q=[URL-encoded destination], wherever the target nexus is readable successful the query string.

The caller goto format is different:

The consequence href is /goto, not the destination
You cannot decode the url= blob offline
The existent URL is successful the Location header connected /goto. Request that URL. Do not travel the redirect.

Google still needs the destination to tie the SERP (domain, favicon, attribution), truthful copies of the URL stay connected the page. That is simply a abstracted communicative from reference Location. The walkthrough is here: google.com/goto: publication Location pinch HEAD.

That displacement matters for anyone building a hunt scale from SERP information astatine scale.

Why Google is doing this

This fits Google's broader push against automated SERP harvesting, particularly from AI crawlers and SEO scrapers that bulk-extract consequence URLs to build their ain indexes.

With plaintext links, a scraper could parse thousands of URLs from HTML without rubbing Google again. With goto, each consequence needs a petition backmost to Google conscionable to study the destination. You publication Location; you do not travel done to the page. That is slower, noisier, and gives Google a clear awesome erstwhile the aforesaid customer resolves hundreds of links successful sequence.

Combined pinch earlier moves for illustration removing &num=100 and tightening BotGuard/SearchGuard, Google is steadily raising the costs of naive SERP scraping.

What we saw astatine Autom

We first spotted goto links connected a mini percent of SERPs. At that level, it was difficult to vessel a reliable hole without breaking responses for everyone else.

As of precocious August 2026, the shape is overmuch much accordant for logged-out and backstage sessions. Result URLs connected Google Search are efficaciously each goto successful those conditions.

We person been monitoring the rollout and testing against it.

Update astatine Autom.dev

We person updated our Google Search pipeline to resoluteness google.com/goto links (read Location, nary follow) and return the last destination URL successful API responses, successful the aforesaid system fields customers already use.

If you telephone Autom's Google Search endpoints, you should support getting usable destination URLs without changing your integration. We will support watching Google's rollout and set if the redirect format shifts again.