Tell HN: Changing Safari's user agent gives you clean links on google.com

7 points

3 years ago

I just found out that if I change my user agent in Safari from the default to "Google Chrome – macOS" I am able to get a clean link from Google without tracking parameters.

Say I search for haskell. Without changing the user agent copying the link from the first result gives me this:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjam-Kcjfb_AhXIM-wKHTw5AEMQFnoECBwQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.haskell.org%2F&usg=AOvVaw0kAKiHrGEHkbMjKAno1TOO&opi=89978449

But if I change it to Google Chrome – macOS I get this instead:

https://www.haskell.org/

However it does not seem to work with every user agent. Changing to e.g. Edge or Firefox gives a result similar to the default user agent.

PS: I have also tried on an iPad and if I request the mobile version of google.com instead of the desktop version I also get the version without the tracking parameters.

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