x.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2099523469687877755
1 correction found
You can no longer inspect a destination before clicking it, or copy the address out of the page.
This is too absolute. Google’s /goto change affects the clickable href and browser-bar hover preview, but Google Search results still display destination attribution on the page, including a visible URL/domain and breadcrumb.
Full reasoning
The post conflates two different things:
- The clickable link target (
href) — which Google has changed on many results to agoogle.com/goto?...redirect. - The destination information shown in the result UI — which Google still displays on the page.
Google’s own Search documentation says a result’s attribution can include the site's URL to the web page, and specifically defines a visible URL as “the URL of the page that’s shown in a readable format,” consisting of the domain and breadcrumb.
Coverage of the 2026 /goto rollout also makes the narrower point that users may no longer be able to preview the full URL in the browser bar before clicking, but it explicitly notes that Google still shows the URL under the title/snippet.
So the blanket claim that users can no longer inspect a destination before clicking or copy the address out of the page is inaccurate. A more precise claim would be that Google often hides the full underlying href behind /goto, while still showing readable destination attribution in the result itself.
2 sources
- Visual Elements Gallery of Google Search | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers
Attribution can include various aspects of the source, such as the name of the site, favicon, and URL to the web page. Visible URL: The URL of the page that's shown in a readable format. A visible URL has two parts: domain and breadcrumb.
- Google confirms deploying goto URL redirects to search results links
From a searcher’s perspective, this probably has almost no impact, outside of them not being able to preview the full URL in the browser bar before clicking. But Google does show the URL under the title of the snippet.