Google reroutes search clicks through /goto, hitting scrapers
Every result link now hops through a google.com/goto redirect built to block scrapers and AI engines — and it can scramble your referrer data.
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What changed
Google confirmed it's rolling out google.com/goto redirects on search result links: a click now routes through a hashed google.com/goto?url= hop before reaching the destination. After a couple of months of quiet testing, it's near-complete across residential IPs.
The point is killing scrapers
Google's stated aim is 'technical measures against evolving forms of abuse' — making it harder for third-party tools, SERP APIs, and AI engines to scrape results. It lands on the heels of Google's messy scraping litigation with SerpAPI.
The attribution catch
If you lean on referrer data, clicks now originate from Google's goto domain rather than the SERP directly, which can alter referrer attribution for your incoming traffic. Google says Search Console data is unaffected — so reconcile analytics against GSC, not raw referrers.
If you build on Google results
Rank trackers, SEO tools, and AI answer engines that parse Google links should expect to unwrap the /goto layer to recover real URLs, and to feel more blocking pressure. Budget for the extra hop and lean on official surfaces — Search Console, the Custom Search JSON API — where you can.