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Google Search Results Link Crap

I don’t know how or why this is happening, but there must be some way to turn it off or stop it. Since moving to a new machine, I’ve discovered that all my searches through Google produce results that have crap surrounding the direct hyperlinks. For example, a search for the word “Chris” spits back familiar results - but each result link is prefixed with “http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=” and suffixed with “&e=9797″ - which totally kills my ability to easily copy / paste the link elsewhere without first removing the surrounding text. Link crap! I tried clearing my cookies to no avail - I just can’t get Google to give me straight up hyperlinks in IE (though it works fine in Firefox). Anybody know how to take this pain away?

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8 Comments

I believe Google has been doing this for a while, I guess it’s a way for Google to track search results that have been clicked on.

I’m guessing a GreaseMonkey script would be able to rectify the “link ****” for you. Are there any coders out there that could do this?

There is one solution…staring you right in the face… use Firefox.

Seriously, I’ve done some searching around and haven’t found a fix or mention of it yet… if I find something..I’ll post it.

I’m clueless…I did post this question in the Google help newsgroup…but who knows if anyone will have an answer. The thread is at:

http://groups.google.com/group/google.public.support.general/browse_thread/thread/ae485e8fee07f7d7/02143ad1f253d4d9#02143ad1f253d4d9

Chris wrote: “I just can’t get Google to give me straight up hyperlinks in IE (though it works fine in Firefox). Anybody know how to take this pain away?”

Is it just me or did you answer your own question…. :)

Harmon

It looks like a new Google “feature”.

Hi,
I’ve created a context menu extension that extracts the embeded hyperlink and copies it to the clipboard. It’s not bulletproof but should work in most cases.
Feel free to contact me via email.
Regards, Igor

Well from the google search box in firefox on osx, if you search for chris, the “save link as” on the first result I got this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fchris.pirillo.com%2F&ei=VRKHRLGWCLG-iwGBrMTHBw&sig2=nb3xrJNkvjSZVcYSL_Cnjw
So it doesn’t seem that Firefox (at least 1.0.6 which is the version the computer lab has installed) on osx is immune to link ****.

Did you ever find a “fix” for the odd google search results in IE? I just noticed it today. I use Opera and IE and in IE i get the strange link **** along with the URL as well. Just wondering if you ever resolved this? Feel free to shoot me an email at my listed address if you ever found out whats going in?

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