Oh Google, WTF?

By Andrew Smith

I have to do research for school. I’ve been told many a time don’t use Google. Now Google is giving me a reason to be pissed off.

When the search results come back with PDF files – I don’t get to see the link to the PDF where it actually sits, the link I get is in this form:

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=3&ved=0CBcQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.perforce.com%2Fperforce%2Fconferences%2Fus%2F2009%2FPresentations%2FCohen-CodeReview-slides.pdf&ei=XJWZS4-IMIGSNpSexHo&usg=AFQjCNE2L5ejvkMYs4RMS4mZu9v7nZO9iA

Are you joking? What is the purpose of this? Is it to make me google it every time? Is it to track when I click on the results? Did some asshole think this protects IP? Rather than reformatting that URL for my records I might decide using the library is easier.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 20:23 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “Oh Google, WTF?”

  1. Stelian Says:
    April 27th, 2010 at 16:22

    Go to Google Search Settings, Check the ‘Do not filter my search results’ button under ‘Safe Search Filtering’. You will get raw links as opposed to filtered links.

  2. Andrew Smith Says:
    April 27th, 2010 at 23:51

    That doesn’t seem to help me. And actually I learned that all of the Google search results are like that. What you see in the status bar is faked in by javascript, if you right-click on a results link, dismiss the menu, and hover over the link again – you’ll see the real URL.

    I guess they do it for tracking purposes, that really sucks.

  3. Stelian Says:
    April 28th, 2010 at 8:42

    > When the search results come back with PDF files – I don’t get to see
    > the link to the PDF where it actually sits, the link I get is in this form:

    > http://www.google.ca/url?...

    > Are you joking?

    If the appearance of the links is what pisses you off, the solution above should suffice. If you need to right click on a link, refresh the search results page, the original link will come back.

    However, if what troubles you is that you are unsure whether Google makes the best effort at running your search as quickly as possible, nobody can do it better, can they?

    Google relies enormously on the feedback from your clicks, here’s an interesting article on it:

    http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

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