Google new tracking URL is nearing full rollout

Google has been testing a brand new monitoring URL format, google.com/goto, inside its search outcomes. This was first noticed by Brodie Clark on July 2, who shared it on X together with a screenshot.

Now, after roughly two months of testing, it seems Google is near a full rollout.

Derek Perkins posted about this on X, wrote:

“Google has been testing anti-bot measures that eradicate all client-side hyperlinks in favor of the google.com/goto… server-side redirects. It was broadly reported the primary week of August from the primary main take a look at, and as of this morning, we’re seeing close to 100% rollout throughout a number of residential IP suppliers. Right here’s a chart displaying the proportion of goto-only SERPs we’ve fetched over the past ~4 months of the take a look at.

At Nozzle we’ve been discarding these in order that our buyer information isn’t polluted with opaque hyperlinks, and the odds have been low sufficient that it wasn’t a problem.

If this continues as is, we’re one thing akin to the num=100 rollout from final fall. The goto hyperlinks can’t be decoded, so suppliers must comply with the redirect hyperlinks. Whereas that works in small-scale exams, Google appears prone to make that powerful, since every SERP could have lots of of hyperlinks to decode.”

Right here is the screenshot of the info shared by Derek Perkins.

A Google spokesperson confirmed this take a look at, telling Barry Schwartz:

“We’ve got a protracted historical past of deploying technical measures in opposition to evolving types of abuse, and we usually take steps to guard our providers and customers.”

This modification may have a significant impression on rank monitoring instruments and website positioning platforms that depend on decoding search outcome hyperlinks, because the goto redirect format can’t be decoded the best way conventional hyperlinks may. If this rolls out absolutely, instruments might must comply with every redirect individually, which turns into much more resource-intensive at scale one thing Perkins compares to the impression of final fall’s num=100 rollout.