Google’s redirect slowdown has left the five SEO APIs with missing website URLs in many search results, complicating rank reports without showing that Google changed its rankings. In an October 31 comparison, five providers returned a Google redirect or no destination URL for 54.8% to 84.7% of organic results. The published API comparison study describes a measurement of selected queries, not every search.
The change affects automated requests following Google’s google.com/goto links. Since October 30, those requests have encountered a verification page before reaching websites. Cloro measured waits of 60 to 115 seconds; Hasan Kalkan of EverGrow SEO Solution saw 12 links redirect after 180 seconds.
Before the slowdown, providers could resolve a destination with one additional request per link. DataForSEO reported on August 27 that only 0.01% of the search-result pages returned by its interface could still contain an unresolved organic goto link. That earlier figure describes its own service, while the October comparison measured several providers under a different set of selected queries.
Five SEO APIs return incomplete destinations
EverGrow sent matching queries at the same time to five APIs across eight countries on October 31. SerpApi had the highest share of results without a real URL, at 84.7%. Bright Data returned no real URL for 73.1%, Oxylabs for 69.4%, DataForSEO for 59.9%, and Serper for 54.8%.
Serper returned real URLs for the first three positions, then omitted them for about 80% of results from position four onward. Cloro’s October 30 measurements also showed real links falling from 95% to 97% before the change to 13% at SerpApi, 29% at Oxylabs and 35% at DataForSEO. Cloro reported its own share returned to 100% from 20:20 UTC that day.
The failure can be difficult to spot because responses may still say “Ok.” Titles, descriptions and positions remain, but the destination field contains Google’s redirect. In Kalkan’s October 30 sample, the domain appeared in the breadcrumb for 94.9% of affected results; all 189 redirects he checked led to that domain.
What the five SEO APIs measurements can show
A tracking tool that identifies a site only from the returned URL may credit Google with that site’s position. Kalkan says rankings and visibility scores calculated this way may be too low from October 22 onward, especially after October 30. That warning concerns measurement data. The source says nothing indicates Google changed its rankings on October 30.
The issue follows other changes affecting automated search measurement. Google began broadly rolling out goto links in late August, and distorted results pages had affected rank-tracking bots since September. The site’s earlier coverage of search data gaps describes another period when rank-tracking data was incomplete during a spam update. Google’s handling of automated access also frames its AI Mode and Gemini search changes, though those developments are separate from the URL resolution problem here.
EverGrow’s queries were hand-picked, so its 58.7% result for October 30 does not represent all Google searches. That day, 2,552 of 4,344 results across 508 pages in eight countries returned “google.com” and a goto URL. The study measures APIs, not commercial rank-tracking products.
Check ranking drops against Search Console
For a reported ranking decline, Kalkan recommends checking Search Console with the same query, page, country and device. Search Console uses Google’s internal data and is not affected by the redirect delay, according to the source. Google’s spam policies classify scraping results for rank-checking purposes as machine-generated traffic that violates its terms.
On October 31 at 18:23 UTC, SerpApi said its fix restored direct links for only the top three results; its incident remained open. DataForSEO support recommended a free converter for up to 100 goto URLs per request. Kalkan’s tests returned correct domains in 31 to 41 seconds per page. The proposed per-page cap comes from support and cannot be fully verified externally.
For related reading on a separate business-search issue, see how companies are adapting content strategy to AI search.
EverGrow scheduled another measurement for November 3. Until then, the clearest next step for businesses is to compare suspected tracking drops with Search Console and watch for provider updates. Google had made no public statement about the change as of November 1.
