Google not linking directly to websites in serps anymore

now using a re-directing URL like yahoo and msn

[nahdoic]

Google used to link directly to a website in its serps, unlike yahoo or msn which would use quite a convoluted redirecting URL. It seems that Google very recently have changed to using a more complicated redirecting URL instead of linking directly.

On google.com a link to webmasterworld now looks like this:

[google.com...]

where 'start' is the position in the serp for the result.

On google.ie for the moment they are still linking directly like this:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Looks like google is taking a closer looks at the results people are clicking now. Before it didn't seem like they could really track this info very well.

Or maybe this is because of the recent pr0 incident - linking to too many bad neighbourhoods :)

[Brett_Tabke]

Read back. There are several dozen threads that go back to 1999 on the subject. Google tests from time-to-time. They do not use that click through counter all the time on all the keywords and not for everyone.

They do however use a click through javascript counter that has been running for over a year.