Search users have noticed that Google have recently been adding tracking URLs to search results. The tracking added to the end of the URL is ‘/goto’, for example, our URL could look like this in the search results “https://embryo.com/goto”. Interestingly, when users click on these types of results, the tracking URL is acting as a passthrough URL used to gain information about the click before sending users to the actual page.
The main cause for concern is the impact this will have on tracking and reporting. Users have already noticed /goto URLs being picked up in popular third party SEO tools like Ahrefs.
Whilst this still looks to be slowly rolling out, it’s important users are aware of this when reviewing future performance metrics.
