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When you search for something in Google, the links displayed in the status bar when you hover your mouse over the results are at first normal and correct. For example, 8 puzzle ai gives a set of results. When you hover your mouse over a link the true URL is displayed in the status bar.

Now say you want to COPY THE URL, for whatever reason. Take a look at the second one: "Lecture 23: Artificial Intelligence". As soon as you right-click the url, the URL is mangled to some MESS http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&ved=0CAkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.princeton.edu%2Fcourses%2Farchive%2Fspr05%2Fcos126%2Flectures%2F23.pdf&ei=NXyWS4bXFoW1tgeBm-HrDQ&usg=AFQjCNEhXwoSZbC3DZfcPsv8td1XgyPxfw.

Hopefully there isn't anything TOO personally identifiable in there, like my favorite color or how I take my coffee.

Its quite frustrating, because I like to copy URL and paste it in elsewhere. Sometimes I want to visit the source page of the PDF, but my browser downloads pdfs immediately, so I need only the front part of the URL. I can't get the URL from the green text at the bottom because it is truncated: "www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr05/cos126/.../23.pdf". If right-clicking the link gives you this mangled url, what you're left with is carefully hovering the mouse over the link and manually typing the url some place else.

Anyone know of a way to disable this?

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This question is off-topic for Super User as defined by the FAQ. Fortunately, the question has been asked and answered before on our related site, Web Apps Stack Exchange: see Copy link found by Google search. – nhinkle♦ Jun 5 '11 at 0:45
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Specifically how is it OT? – bobobobo Jun 7 '11 at 13:33
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closed as off topic by nhinkle♦ Jun 5 '11 at 0:45

Questions on Super User are expected to generally relate to computer software or computer hardware, within the scope defined in the faq.

5 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

This script for Greasemonkey on Firefox fixes the problem.

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+1 also works in Chrome – squircle Mar 9 '10 at 22:50
Sweet. You are the superuser of the day – bobobobo Mar 10 '10 at 0:36
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Hmm. This doesn't work for chrome anymore. – bobobobo Oct 30 '10 at 18:49
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up vote 4 down vote

These links are used by Google's Web History feature to track which search results you have opened. (Google uses your history to adjust the rankings of your own search results - and the links you have clicked earlier are pushed up.)

Open your Web History page, sign in, then click "Pause" in the left sidebar. Tracking will be disabled. (Optionally also remove all items.)

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Seems like this doesn't work anymore :( – grawity Sep 8 '11 at 18:59
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up vote 1 down vote
  • Copy the link text from the results, not the link destination.
  • Use another search engine.
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As I mentioned the link text is truncated – bobobobo Mar 9 '10 at 17:10
I did your search, and the links are not truncated: goblinbox.com/images/su/lecture23.jpg. – goblinbox Mar 9 '10 at 17:33
@goblinbox depends on screen size? – vgm64 Mar 9 '10 at 17:56
@vgm64 Maybe? I tried the search in three browsers - FF, Opera, and IE - and the links were never truncated. Operating system? – goblinbox Mar 9 '10 at 18:13
no.. goblinbox, you must just be a superuser. Really though, you searched for a "lecture 23: artificial intelligence", not "8 puzzle ai". magic search queries, some truncate urls, others don't.. – bobobobo Mar 10 '10 at 0:33
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up vote 1 down vote

I am not seeing these kinds of links right now, but I have seen them before. Google appears to be periodically inserting themselves into the links so that they can see where people are clicking the search results.

It's probably a hopeless gesture, but I would contact Google and tell them that, if they want to munge their clickable links like this, they need to provide a PermaLink with each search result (like the one under this answer) so that the URL can be properly copy/pasted. If enough people complain about it, they might actually do it.

Unfortunately it's not something that can be disabled, as it's part of the web page that Google serves.

Hopefully there isn't anything TOO personally identifiable in there

Only every single link you click. I could tell a lot about you if I knew that information.

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up vote 1 down vote

If you're on Firefox, get the CustomizeGoogle plug-in; it blocks Google from tracking your click-through information.

http://www.customizegoogle.com/

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