Google Search is now altering how it presents organic result links by rewriting them to use a redirect format starting with google.com/goto?url=..., rather than exposing the destination URL directly in the page's HTML. When users click on a search result, Google redirects them to the actual webpage. The url parameter in this new format uses a proprietary encoding that is not a simple base64 representation but appears to be an opaque reference to Google's index record for the page.

This update, observed consistently since late August 2026 for users who are logged out or browsing in private mode, may still be experimental but is no longer limited to a small subset of search engine results pages (SERPs). It differs from Google's previous redirect wrapper, google.com/url?q=[destination], where the target URL was visible and easily decoded.

With the new google.com/goto format, the href attribute points to /goto rather than the destination URL directly. The real URL is only accessible via the HTTP Location header returned by a HEAD request to the /goto link, making offline decoding impossible. Google still includes copies of the URL on the page for rendering purposes, such as displaying the domain and favicon, but these are separate from the redirect mechanism.

This change is significant for developers and companies that build search indexes by scraping SERP data at scale. Previously, scrapers could extract URLs directly from the HTML without additional requests to Google. Now, each result requires a separate request to Google to resolve the redirect and obtain the destination URL. This process is slower, generates more traffic to Google, and provides Google with clear signals when many links are resolved in sequence.

The update aligns with Google's broader efforts to combat automated scraping, particularly from AI crawlers and SEO scrapers that bulk-extract result URLs to create their own indexes. Alongside other measures like removing the &num=100 parameter and enhancing BotGuard/SearchGuard protections, Google is increasing the difficulty and cost of naive SERP scraping.

The team at Autom first noticed the google.com/goto links appearing on a small portion of SERPs, which made it challenging to implement reliable fixes without affecting other users. As of late August 2026, the pattern has become more widespread for logged-out and private browsing sessions. Autom has updated its Google Search pipeline to handle the new redirect format by reading the Location header without following the redirect, ensuring that API responses continue to provide the final destination URLs transparently to customers.

Users of Autom's Google Search endpoints should experience no disruption and do not need to modify their integrations. The company will continue monitoring Google's rollout and adjust its handling if the redirect format evolves further.