Google Search has begun rewriting organic result links to a `google.com/goto?url=...` format instead of exposing destination URLs directly in HTML. When clicked, users are redirected to the real page via an opaque, Google-specific encoding — not a simple base64 string. This change appears consistently for logged-out and private browsing sessions as of late August 2026, suggesting a broader rollout beyond a limited experiment.

Unlike the older `google.com/url?q=` redirect where the target URL was readable in the query string, the new `goto` format requires a request back to Google to read the `Location` header and discover the true destination. This raises the cost and complexity for automated SERP harvesting, particularly by AI crawlers and SEO scrapers that previously extracted thousands of URLs from static HTML.

The shift aligns with Google's broader anti-scraping efforts, including the removal of `&num=100` and tighter Bot Guard/Search Guard defenses. Autom.dev detected the pattern early and has updated its Google Search pipeline to resolve `goto` links by reading the `Location` header without following redirects, preserving structured API responses for customers. The company continues monitoring for further changes.