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Sometime recently -- maybe in the last month or so -- a glitch came up with Google and Safari 6. I don't know if it happened when I upgraded to Safari 6 or if it's the result of encrypted search results on Google.

example search results

As you can see here, when I search for something on Google, the history show that search. But when I click on a result, the history shows a crazy Google URL and does not show the title of the site that I went to, which makes it impossible to go back to something I was looking at earlier without randomly trying a bunch of different search results.

Any idea why this is happening, and how I can disable it? This is relatively new behavior. Between this and the new web inspector, I can't stand Safari anymore.

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  • I did find gDirectLinks (canisbos.com/gdirectlinks) which rewrites links in google search results. As a side effect, it also fixes my particular problem. But my question still remains: what causes this, and is it affecting other? How has nobody at Google/Apple noticed this and fixed it already? I can only assume that it must be a rare problem. Nov 11, 2012 at 17:23
  • Does the problem happen on other browsers too? I can’t check right now so tell me if you can.
    – duci9y
    Nov 11, 2012 at 18:15
  • No, it's not a problem in Chrome (no surprise there) or Firefox. Nov 11, 2012 at 22:13
  • Interesting. I would like to see this problem solved. I tested it on my Mac and the problem happens with some searches but not with others. I can’t seem to find a pattern.
    – duci9y
    Nov 12, 2012 at 12:36
  • This also really annoys me. I often just re-run the search and look for the visited links, but it's kinda lame.
    – Cathy
    Nov 27, 2012 at 0:36

1 Answer 1

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You can use the Detox extension for Safari and Chrome, which fixes this on Google and Twitter.

This happens because Google switched to a client-side redirect for their tracking links (in JavaScript, I think) so the browser thinks the tracking page is the page you wanted. I'm not sure why. Twitter does the same thing, but it's so that they can grab the referer when you click on a t.co link from a client or another website.

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  • Detox has stopped working for me recently, any other solutions?
    – shawkinaw
    May 31, 2013 at 7:11
  • @shawkinaw You could try contacting the author via email or Twitter.
    – Kevin Chen
    May 31, 2013 at 17:36
  • Try updating to Detox 1.2.3. Jul 23, 2013 at 20:43

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