One thing I have always liked about Google is that they never futzed around with their search result links. If you clicked a search result, it went right to the URL. No re-route through some Google click-tracking proxy or anything like that. It also meant you could do a simple copy-and-paste of any link in the results without any trouble.
Not so anymore...
Maybe it's been going on longer, but in the past couple weeks I have noticed links in Google search results being routed through a click-tracking server. Now it seems to be happening, for me at least, with
all results. Here is an example:
Google search for: lawn mowers
You can check for yourself. Right-click and copy the link location of the regular search results. Instead of the URL shown in green at the end of the result, you get some long Google-based URL that tracks your click.
Why did I not notice this before? Because Google is changing the URL
right when you click the link. Not cool. I'm guessing this is to fool browsers that don't allow sites to change the status text. (The status text is the little text in the bottom-left of your browser that says where a link is taking you.) Changing the status text was a long-time way of fooling people into going to sites other than what the link led you to think. Firefox has the ability for sites to change status text turned off by default.
So how is Google going about doing this? They're using a Javascript onmousedown function to change the URL of the link right when you click it. The function they use and the corresponding onmousedown property for a search result is this:
function rwt(el,ct,cd,sg){el.href="/url?sa=t&ct="+escape(ct)+"&cd="+escape(cd)+"&url="+escape(el.href).replace(/\+/g,"%2B")+"&ei=0n8JQ7uTEonoaO3Q-N4O"+sg;el.onmousedown="";return true;}
onmousedown="return rwt(this,'res','1','')"
Google has had a pretty stellar record of "do no evil", but this is pretty shady. It also is downright
annoying when trying to copy-and-paste URL's out of search results. Instead of some clear URL for the result, I get a bunch of crap I have to filter and sift through to get the URL I
thought I was copying.
The code is pretty self-explanatory, but I even verified it by tabbing my way over to a search result link, then using my right-click
keyboard button, got the context menu and copied the link location. Which URL did I get? The one I was expecting, and the one shown on the page. Not Google's click-tracking URL.
To some of you this may be a little thing, but it's to me it's not. It breaks my trust of Google just that much.
Update: There is a Firefox extension called Customize Google that now has support for stripping this click-tracking out of Google search results. I now have it installed and it works beautifully. It does many things, such as add Google Suggest to the regular Google home page, removes ads, includes links to search results from other engines, and more.