Google has started encrypting its search results' URLs with "goto?=" links for logged out sessions and/or scrapers ( 28 August, 2026 )

About a week or two ago, I started noticing that I could no longer copy the clean links for search result hits on Google. I thought it was maybe some quirk of a browser I was using, but today when trying to copy a link to a Youtube video, I realized it was actually rolled out globally (it seems). Basically instead of getting a https://youtube/. com/watch?v=-ed6UeDp1ek link now through google, (spaced out link to avoid AutoMod) you will get https://www.google.com/goto?url=CAES<rest-of-encrypted-blob-containing--versionByte-keyID-cipherText> The article describes the change in technical detail, and mentions a fix, but the author has kept it private for now so Google doesn’t patch it up (like they probably will or have for this workaround relying on the “Translate Page” feature with a different Browser Language selection [Twitter Link, Aug 27 [https://x.com/natzir9/status/2092923147402055879]]). [https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/2f40bc66-099e-49f9-9ba8-2fa17d9eba69.png] Why it will probably be patched: [https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/c61bcfd1-88f9-4c2b-a6fa-c0be1f72dbde.png] Surprised there’s no post about it here already. Only Hackernews article I could find (4 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506338 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506338]