Google Search seems like it is rolling out the google.com/goto URL as a passthrough URL within the search results that it began testing in July 2026. This seems like a way for Google to help prevent scraping of its search results by third-party tools and AI companies, but Google has not yet commented on this goto URL parameter.
Update: A Google spokesperson has now confirmed for us that this is rolling out and told us:
"We have a long history of deploying technical measures against evolving forms of abuse, and we regularly take steps to protect our services and users."
Here is a screenshot of what I mean - as you can see, when you mouse over a URL in the Google Search results, you can see Google is using a goto URL parameter to take you to the site, as opposed to taking you directly to the URL of the page.
Here is the goto parameter passthrough:
Here is what Google has typically done:
Derek Perkins from Nozzle told me on X that Google has been pushing this change live and he sees it at "nearly a 100% rollout across several residential ip providers." He shared this chart showing the spike in how much Google is using this. This chart showing the percentage of goto only SERPs that Nozzle fetched over the last ~4 months of the test:
Derek added, "Google has been testing anti-bot measures that eliminate all client side links in favor of google. com/goto... server side redirects." "The goto links can't be decoded, so providers will have to follow the redirect links. While that works in small scale tests, Google seems likely to make that tough, since each SERP will have hundreds of links to decode," he added.
This is likely to try to make it more difficult for SerpApi, who Google sued and is struggling to beat in court, from scraping its search results. As well as AI companies and other tools from scraping its search results. But I am sure the third-party tools and services will adapt; they always do.
I am seeing the new goto URL redirects now in several browsers I am testing, so maybe it is rolling out.
I emailed Google to confirm - so stay tuned.
Forum discussion at X.
Update: A Google spokesperson has now confirmed for us that this is rolling out and told us:
"We have a long history of deploying technical measures against evolving forms of abuse, and we regularly take steps to protect our services and users."
