
Ask HN: Have you noticed that Google search links are less clickable lately? - dplgk
Recently, in Chrome on macOS (Sierra and High Sierra), I find that clicking (wireless mouse and wired mouse tested) on Google search result links does not open the link. I find I&#x27;m often clicking on the blue underline of the link and it&#x27;s not opening. I&#x27;ll even move the mouse up a few pixels and it still does not open. Why is this happening?
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tropo
Just switch.

Google is fully capable of providing excellent results. Today they'd rather
please governments, media cartels, and biased employees. Google can get away
with this because they aren't hurting for money. Search quality is no longer a
priority. Google will treat you like a horse with blinders, or like a small
child. Google would rather you not decide things for yourself.

Duckduckgo and Bing are decent. Both may seem wonderful if you now try them,
but really you've just been getting accustomed to declining quality from
Google.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Google results are still miles ahead of Bing results in my experience.
Sometimes when I set up a new computer I'll accidentally search Bing, and the
designs are similar enough I don't notice until I realize that the results I'm
getting suck.

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cauchyk
Yes, i've been experiencing these rather frequently. I disabled all the
extensions and it's still happening.

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wingerlang
I haven't noticed, but testing it it does eat the click.

When I tap just on or below the underline, it eats it. Then if I try to move
the mouse away and back to the exact same position, the underline doesn't show
up (and the hand cursor is the default mouse). To be clear the mouse is at the
same position I clicked on before (where it had the hand+underline). Maybe a
Chrome bug?

~~~
jiveturkey
Yep, confirmed.

When you click within a few vertical pixels of the underline, for click
targets that are multiline where only the first line gets the underline, the
click gets eaten 100% of the time. I'm sure there are other cases but that's
the most obvious since the google search results are formatted like that.

    
    
      line 1 - title
      line 2 - url
    

the box around line1 && line2 form the click target. the underline only
appears when you hover over the target area. if you hit that area between line
1 & line 2, where the underline is drawn, the click is eaten.

UPDATE: it's not eaten. it alternately toggles the underline on or off.

Also, you have to click above the green URL text for the click to toggle the
underline. If you click past the edge of the URL text (under the 'le' in the
example above), the click works correctly.

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jzl
Not happening to me, but this question reminds me of something I've been
wondering for a while: when did Google first start redirecting search result
links so they could track what you end up clicking on? Was it like that before
2010? Has it always been that way? I feel like they had direct links
throughout most of the 2000's but maybe I'm imagining it.

~~~
gcbw2
Since forever.

And they do it on the onClick event, so you are mislead to believe that the
link is clean (as show on your status bar on link mouse over, until the very
last second)

And they do that on GMail, calendar, and even on mobile apps such as google
voice and hangouts. (i.e. if you long press and copy, it is a clean url, if
you touch the link, it opens a tracking redirect on the browser --which chrome
hides. But you should be using firefox on android as well)

Firefox (desktop and mobile) and Chorme (only desktop because google don't
want you installing adblockers on their browsers) have an extension called
"Skip Redirect" that works-around this problem.

~~~
naikrovek
I think they just modify the status bar manually on hover. If you right-click
a search result URL and copy it to the clipboard, it's the super long redirect
URL, even as the browser status bar shows the URL you will be directed to.

~~~
sublupo
I've wondered for a while how to do that. Is there a JavaScript function that
modifies the status bar?

~~~
naikrovek
Yes. Though other commenters have said that it is only supported on some
browsers.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Window/stat...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Window/status)

~~~
sublupo
thanks

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jamieweb
I've been finding the opposite - where they are _too_ clickable...

Depending on which Google version loads, sometimes the green URL displayed
under the blue title is also clickable. You expect hyperlinks on the WWW to be
blue and underlined, so when some green text with no underline is also a link,
it can be misleading.

Keep an eye out for the cursor changing to a hand, which sounds like a piece
of advice from the 1990's!

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ljoshua
Yes, I'm experiencing the same thing! I recently switched to Brave beta, and
thought maybe it was something there, but I opened up Chrome for another task
and was hit with the same issue.

I've got a couple common extensions running between the two, with uBlock
Origin being my most likely culprit if it's an extension thing, but it's
definitely annoying! Don't know why it's going on.

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kristoft
Thought it were my "miss clicks"! Now its becoming interesting...

(i'm on mojave and latest chrome)

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NVRM
Yes, a lot, getting worse facing a slow network.

But dragging or middle click to a new tab is following the link. This looks a
lot an issue between the numerous javascript trackers and my browser ad
blocker. But no.

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gitgud
No clicking problems on Linux. However I have noticed (not sure how recent
this is) that Google is _NOT_ redirecting the results with Google urls
anymore! which is good news.

~~~
jhoh
They still do. Inspect the HTML. They're doing some JavaScript magic and
replace the link just when you click on it.

~~~
gitgud
True, but I can still copy the link I guess, on desktop anyway, maybe it was
mobile that used to change the links to google on copy.

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pookeh
Happens to me too all the time. I've noticed it usually happens when I click
near the bottom of the link. But it may just be the drag sensitivity. Highly
annoying.

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egfx
Hmm, now that I'm thinking about it, I did have one link fail to open on the
first try yesterday. But mostly nothing out of the ordinary.

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snazz
Not on my machine. Likely a Chrome or macOS bug (or a configuration problem...
who knows?) Have you tried a Linux live USB or another computer?

~~~
dplgk
Have not tried other OSes yet.

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Fjolsvith
I found that its pretty much any link in Chrome for me on Windows 10.
Regularly have to click twice to get Chrome to move.

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jiveturkey
yep. then i realized it’s not just google search results. that’s just most
obvious case.if i click very carefully it works first click.

so my working theory is that drag sensitivity has increased. so a sloppy 1
pixel click-drag used to be a click but now it’s an imperceptible drag. i
haven’t got up the motivation yet to audit a mouse event log.

~~~
jiveturkey
nope. as another commenter said, it's happens 100% when clicking within a few
pixels of the underline. i'll respond to that comment with more detail.

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cagmz
Yes, to the point of requiring double clicks.

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jurgenwerk
I'm experiencing this recently too.

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kkoppenhaver
I've been seeing the same, very frequently especially over the last two weeks.

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nikisweeting
Been happening to me for the past month or so, I thought I was just going
crazy.

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dyeje
Thought I was going crazy. Have definitely been experiencing this.

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udithishara
Yeah, same here

Glad it's not just me, i thought my mouse was being buggy

OSX Mojave, Latest Chrome

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uptownfunk
Could it be a play to make the ad impression stay for a longer time? Even a
few milliseconds would add up to a lot id imagine.

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knewter
all the time. glad I'm not the only one

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paulcole
Nope, no issues here.

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trelliscoded
Same here

