Google now hides every search result URL behind /goto redirects, making SERP scraping O(n) requests
autom.dev (475 points on HN)·high signal
Google replaced direct result links with google.com/goto?url= redirects carrying a proprietary, non-base64 encoding that acts as an opaque reference to its index record. Recovering a destination requires a separate request to the /goto endpoint reading the Location header without following it, so harvesting a result page goes from one parse to hundreds of sequential callbacks to Google. It has been consistent across logged-out and private-mode searches since late August 2026, and follows the removal of &num=100 pagination and tighter BotGuard detection.