What is the google.com/goto redirect?

Google has begun replacing the destination URL on organic search result links with a wrapper of the form google.com/goto?url=[hash]. Clicking it passes the user through Google before landing on the real page. Google confirmed the rollout on August 26, 2026, after testing since July.

How can I tell if my SEO tool is affected by the goto change?

Check whether reported destination URLs have started resolving to google.com rather than the ranking domain, and whether domain-level metrics such as share of voice shifted sharply around the rollout date without a corresponding ranking change. A break that starts on a rollout date is usually a measurement failure rather than a movement in rankings.

An update from DemandSphere on Google's goto redirects

Q: Why is Google adding goto redirects to search results?

Google describes it as a technical measure against abuse. A spokesperson said: 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. In practice it makes automated reading of search results harder.

Google has confirmed, on August 26, that it is rolling out google.com/goto redirects on organic search result links. We are also seeing them in SERP features as well. A result link that used to point at the landing page URL now points at google.com/goto?url=[hash] within the SERP, which then passes the click through to the proper landing page URL.

Casual users, if they are logged in, may or may not get the goto link replacement but, either way, they are not likely to notice these changes. You can easily test these by checking the SERP in your browser’s incognito mode.

A Google spokesperson described it this way: “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.”

We, of course, view this definition of “abuse” to be very unilaterally defined and not at all an accurate reflection of what has been repeatedly settled in the courts (in the US).

What breaks (without our countermeasures)

Any browsing surface that reads the link in a result and treats it as the destination now receives a Google-owned wrapper with an encoded target. Where that is not handled, it surfaces as:

Destination URLs that all resolve to google.com
Domain matching that fails, so your own pages stop being recognized as yours
Share of voice and competitor attribution calculated against the wrong domains
Historical series that break on the rollout date

The countermeasures we have deployed

We already have countermeasures deployed.

In summary:

Ranking data for organic is unaffected
We are in the process of rolling out these countermeasures for SERP feature URLs
All metrics such as Share of Voice, Unified Visibility, and others continue to work as before.

If something in your reporting looks wrong, feel free to contact your Account Manager and we will investigate right away.

Future moves expected

Google removed the num=100 parameter last September. Before that, JavaScript gating in the January SERPocalypse. Now the long-predicted goto redirects. We have a pretty good feeling on what they will do next and are already working on additional countermeasures.

We log every confirmed Google change, back to 2000, in the free Google Algorithm and AI Search Update Tracker.