Google is rolling out a new URL format across its search results. Instead of linking directly to the destination page, some results now use a google.com/goto URL that redirects users through Google first.

goto URL redirect on Google results

This change may cause some URLs returned by web scraping tools, including SerpApi, to contain Google’s intermediary /goto link instead of the direct destination URL.

Current Status

Our engineering team is actively working to resolve these URLs across all affected search result types. We have already made progress, but Google’s implementation continues to evolve and may vary across different search features.

No changes are required to your SerpApi integration. We will continue deploying improvements on our side and monitoring the rollout for new variations.

We received a report that this change is affecting:
- Google Search API
- Google Search Light API
- Google News Light API
- Google Videos API
- Google AI Overview API

Upon testing in Google directly, we indeed see the /goto link is all over the place, not just in organic results.

The direct destination is still present within Google’s /goto URL, but it is encoded using Protocol Buffers (protobuf). Because Google introduced the change gradually, we resolve each variation as it appears.

If you encounter a google.com/goto URL in a SerpApi response, please send the Search ID to contact@serpapi.com. This will help our team identify and investigate the specific variation.

What is the Google goto redirect?

Google began testing the new URL format earlier in 2026. Search Engine Roundtable first reported the test in July, after observers noticed result links being rewritten into a format similar to:

https://www.google.com/goto?...

When clicked in a browser, the URL passes through Google before redirecting to the page displayed in the search result.

By late August, the change had expanded significantly. The rollout was not limited to the standard organic results. We received different reports that the redirect link appeared across multiple result types: Google Videos, Google Lens, and others.

Previously, our customers were also reporting that they just see a plain string with this form CAES{....} as the link. We've quickly resolved this and returned the actual link, which is this new redirect goto URL:

google.com/goto?url=CAES..

What is Protobuf?

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a statically typed data serialization format developed and used extensively by Google. Its purpose is similar to JSON, but it is significantly more compact, faster to serialize and deserialize, and requires a predefined message schema for both encoding and decoding.

Read more about decoding Protobuf here.

Impact on SEO tools

While it did not change the visible result title, snippet, position, or other parsed data, it made the link field less useful for workflows that rely on direct URLs. Businesses that need to monitor which page shows up or just check their ranking in general are now blocked by this.

Potentially affected workflows included:

  • Rank tracking and SEO analysis
  • Citation and source extraction
  • AI agents and RAG pipelines
  • Link analysis and content discovery
  • Applications that store or compare destination URLs

Impact on Web Scraping tools

Search engines are constantly evolving. Changes like this are why teams rely on SerpApi instead of maintaining their own Google Search parsers. Our goal is to adapt to these changes while keeping your API responses stable, structured, and ready to use.