Google Search has shifted how it displays organic result links, replacing direct destination URLs with redirects through google.com/goto. Instead of showing the target web address in the HTML, Google now uses the format google.com/goto?url=[encoded-reference], according to Autom.dev.
When a user clicks a result, Google redirects them to the actual page. The url parameter uses a custom Google encoding that is not plaintext—it functions as an opaque reference to Google’s internal index record rather than a readable URL.
This differs from Google’s previous redirect wrapper, google.com/url?q=[URL-encoded destination], where the target link was visible in the query string. With the new goto format, the destination URL cannot be decoded offline. Instead, the real address appears only in the Location header returned by Google’s server when a request is made to the goto link.
According to Autom.dev, the goto format began appearing on a small percentage of search results but has become consistent across logged-out and private browsing sessions as of late August 2026. The change is part of Google’s effort to combat automated SERP harvesting, particularly from AI crawlers and SEO scrapers that bulk-extract result URLs to build competing indexes.
With plaintext links, scrapers could parse thousands of URLs from a single HTML page without making additional requests to Google. The goto redirect requires each result to trigger a separate request back to Google just to learn the destination—and each resolution of a hundred links in sequence sends a clear signal to Google’s systems. Combined with earlier measures like removing the &num=100 parameter that allowed bulk result requests and tightening BotGuard and SearchGuard security features, Google is raising the cost of large-scale SERP scraping.
Autom.dev announced it has updated its Google Search pipeline to resolve google.com/goto links by reading the Location header without following the redirect, then returning the final destination URL in its API responses using existing structured fields. According to the company, customers using its Google Search endpoints should continue receiving usable destination URLs without changing their integrations.
Key facts
- Google replaced direct destination URLs in search results with google.com/goto redirects
- The url parameter uses custom, non-base64 encoding that cannot be decoded offline
- The actual destination appears only in the Location header when the goto link is requested
- The change is broadly visible in logged-out and private browsing sessions as of late August 2026
- Each result now requires a separate request to Google to learn the destination, making bulk scraping slower and noisier
- This move is part of Google’s broader anti-scraping effort targeting AI crawlers and SEO scrapers