Google no longer provides direct URLs in search results

Google Search now rewrites organic result links to opaque google.com/goto redirects, raising costs for SERP scrapers including AI crawlers.

As of late August 2026, logged-out and private-mode Google SERPs consistently replace organic result hrefs with /goto?url= links using a Google-specific encoding that cannot be decoded offline; the destination URL is only revealed in the Location header of the /goto response. This differs from the older google.com/url?q= format where the target was readable in the query string. The change fits Google's broader anti-scraping push against AI crawlers and SEO scrapers, alongside removing &num=100 and tightening BotGuard/SearchGuard. SERP API vendor Autom.dev updated its pipeline to resolve goto links via HEAD requests without following redirects.