The news
Google has altered how search results are built. The links shown to users no longer point directly to the destination sites listed beneath each title. Instead, clicks pass through an intermediate Google page before reaching the external address.
This removes the long-standing ability for anyone viewing or copying a result to obtain the actual target URL in one step. The visible text of the address remains, but the underlying hyperlink behavior has changed.
Context
For years, Google search results displayed the full destination URL in plain text below the title. Users could read the address, copy it, or open it without any extra redirection. The new construction keeps the displayed text but wraps the click action so that it first lands on a Google-controlled endpoint.
The observation was posted to Hacker News on 12 September 2026. The linked report came from autom.dev and documented the shift in link handling. The post received 239 points and drew 119 comments from engineers and site operators who had noticed the difference in how results render and behave.
No official statement from Google accompanied the update. The modification affects the HTML structure of result pages and the path every external click must take.
Details
The autom.dev report shows that the change replaces the direct href value with a Google-owned redirector. Previously, the href attribute contained the target site’s address. Now it contains a Google path that forwards the request onward.
The visible URL text under each result title continues to show the destination domain and path. Only the actual click destination has moved behind the extra hop. This distinction matters for anyone who inspects the raw HTML, builds link previews, or relies on referrer data.
The Hacker News thread recorded 119 comments within the first day. Participants discussed how the new behavior appears in both desktop and mobile results and noted that the change is consistent across logged-in and logged-out sessions.
Why it matters
Engineers who maintain crawlers, analytics pipelines, or browser extensions must now account for the added redirect step. Any tool that follows or logs the href value directly will record a Google domain instead of the publisher’s address. This breaks assumptions that have held for more than two decades of search result scraping and link analysis.
Publishers lose direct visibility into the origin of their traffic. Referrer headers now show a Google domain rather than the search result page itself. Site operators who previously used referrer data to distinguish search visitors from other sources must update their logging or accept reduced granularity.
Users lose the option to inspect or share the real destination address before visiting. Copying the displayed URL still works, but clicking the result no longer opens that exact address. For people who rely on URL inspection for security checks, bookmarking, or simple transparency, the change removes a small but previously reliable control.
Over time the shift concentrates more routing power with the search provider. Every external visit now passes through an additional Google-controlled point that can be logged, measured, or altered without changing the visible result text. Publishers and readers who value direct, inspectable links have one fewer independent signal in the flow from search to destination.
The absence of an announcement means implementers must discover and adapt to the behavior through observation rather than documentation. That pattern increases the cost for anyone whose work depends on stable, predictable search result structure.
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Sources:
{"sources":[{"publisher":"Hacker News (front page)","title":"Google no longer provides direct URLs in search results","url":"https://www.autom.dev/blog/google-search-goto-links","published_at":"2026-09-12T03:14:20.000Z","summary":"Article URL: https://www.autom.dev/blog/google-search-goto-links Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49668386 Points: 239 # Comments: 119"}]}
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