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google.com is always shielded by our firewall.

When I search something at google.com, a result list appears. Then I click the link, the URL changes to a processed url like:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F&ei=PE_AUMLmFKW9iAfrl4HoCQ&usg=AFQjCNGcA9BfTgNdpb6LfcoG0sjA7hNW6A&cad=rjt

Then my browser is blocked because of google.com I guess. The only useful information in that long like processed URL is

http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com(http://www.amazon.com).

My quesitons:

  • What's the meaning of that long like processed URL?

  • Is there a way to remove the header google.com/url?sa.. each time I click the search results?

3 Answers 3

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www.amazon.com%2F&ei=PE_AUMLmFKW9iAfrl4HoCQ&usg=AFQjCNGcA9BfTgNdpb6LfcoG0sjA7hNW6A&cad=rjt %2F

  • As I see you know, %2F is a forward slash. After that you have & which is where parameters are separated. So something at Amazon's end reads those parameters

  • ei=.. usg=... cad=... These are all codes in Amazon's program, not open source but you may find out what they do via experimentation though it's probably not worth bothering to play with trying to ascertain that. It'd be good to have an item in the context menu that copies a proper link i.e. just the Amazon part not the google junk before it. There may be one.

  • With a YouTube URL you can remove some of the &..&.. so it just reads www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfdfdd which is good for sending to somebody. The other parameters aren't necessary. This may be true of other links too like some Amazon links, if the purpose is just to send somebody a link, so it just goes to the book, then you can clean it a bit and test it, make sure the link you cleaned still refers to the same thing properly.

If a URL is long you can use tinyurl.com or similar shorteners.

Added

Try this extension in the Chrome browser which should remove the junk from the URL.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dont-track-me-google/gdbofhhdmcladcmmfjolgndfkpobecpg/related

"Removes the annoying link-conversion at Google Search/maps/... The Referrer is also hidden to improve your privacy.

This extension gets rid of Google's ugly (tracking) URL ... "

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  • @bariop Thanks for the fast reply. I want to clean the url, because the header of the long url 'google.com/url?sa=t...` it makes my browser blocked. Is there any settings to remove it when i click the search results each time?
    – Teifi
    Dec 6, 2012 at 8:47
  • try the extension for the Chrome browser, called "don't track me google". i've added a reference to it in my answer
    – barlop
    Dec 6, 2012 at 11:41
  • @Teifi give it an upvote too if it works.. on SU upvotes are used rather than littering the place with notes saying thanks.
    – barlop
    Dec 6, 2012 at 13:22
  • 1
    It's a perfect answer, and I'd rather to upvote your answer, but my reputation is not enough to upvote... sorry.
    – Teifi
    Dec 6, 2012 at 13:27
  • @Teifi no prob. if i could give you some of my rep, I would ;-)
    – barlop
    Dec 6, 2012 at 13:34
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What you have is an URL wrapped in an URL.

If you want to decode the wrapped URL manually you can use an online URL decoder like this and paste the part starting with http%3A%2F%2F and ends with the next &:

So you get http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F as input which is decoded http://www.amazon.com/

For most web-browsers there are plugins available that automatically "clean" the Google search results so that links directly link to the target web page without wrapped URLs that are redirection through Google.

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This is Google’s link-tracking mechanism. It helps them analyse search results by anonymously logging whenever a search result is clicked, thus providing feedback of which search results users deem better than others. Naturally, many people don’t like having their web patterns tracked (even anonymously).

What you can do is to install a browser-extension or user-script to strip the tracking URLs. There are many available, but not all of them work (in fact, most don’t seem to work correctly, or are poorly coded enough that they break when Google makes a change to even just the layout of pages).

I have tried and tested numerous extensions and scripts, and the one I have been using for years is googlePrivacy. In addition to simply working and working well (and fast), because it is a user-script, unlike extensions, it does not cause a new process to be created along with the memory overhead and CPU impact.

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