@joshuamaraney: Google’s New /goto URL Redirect Is Big News for SEO Google has made a significant technical change to the way links work in its search results. Instead of Google Search always exposing and linking directly to the destination URL, Google is increasingly routing results through a google.com/goto redirect before sending the user to the website. Why does this matter for SEO? A huge part of the SEO industry relies on collecting Google search results at scale. Rank trackers, SERP APIs, SEO platforms and other tools need to identify the actual URLs ranking for millions of searches. Google’s new /goto system can hide the destination URL behind an encoded redirect, making that information considerably harder and potentially more expensive for third-party tools to collect. This does not mean your website suddenly ranks differently because of /goto. The bigger issue is SEO data. Rank tracking, competitor research, SERP analysis and the tools we rely on to understand Google results may have to change the way they collect their information. For anyone involved in SEO, this is a Google change worth understanding because it could have a major impact on the SEO tools and data we use every day. #GoogleSEO #SEO #GoogleGoTo #TechnicalSEO #seosoftware
