🔹 Google Link Cleaner

Copy a link out of Google Search results, a Google Doc, or a Gmail message and you often do not get the link — you get google.com/url?q= followed by the real address, buried in URL encoding alongside a signature and a set of tracking tokens.

Paste it below to pull out the actual destination.

The three things Google does to links

1. Redirect wrapping

google.com/url?q=DESTINATION&sa=…&usg=… routes the click through Google before forwarding you. The destination is URL-encoded inside q (or url in the newer format).

2. AMP

google.com/amp/s/example.com/page serves a Google-hosted copy of someone else's page. The address bar says Google, the content belongs to the publisher, and the URL you share points at the cache rather than the original.

3. Click identifiers on ad destinations

Landing on a page from a Google ad appends gclid. Like Facebook's fbclid, it is a per-click token used to match a visit back to the ad that generated it.

Parameter	What it does	Removed?
`q or url`	The real destination, URL-encoded inside the redirect wrapper.	Extracted
`sa, usg, ved, ei`	Google's internal signature and result-position tokens. `usg` signs the redirect; `ved` encodes where in the results page you clicked.	Yes
`gclid`	Google Click Identifier. Attributes a visit to a specific ad click.	Yes
`/amp/s/`	Google AMP cache prefix in front of the publisher's real URL.	Unwrapped
`utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign`	Campaign tags, typically set by the advertiser rather than by Google.	Yes

Before and after

Before

https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fguide&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AOvVaw2K9pQ

After

https://example.com/guide

Before

https://www.google.com/amp/s/example.com/news/story

After

https://example.com/news/story

Why wrapped links cause real problems

Beyond the tracking, redirect-wrapped links are fragile in ways direct links are not. The usg signature can expire, which turns a link pasted into a document months ago into an error page. Some corporate mail filters and chat apps treat google.com/url redirects as suspicious because the pattern is also used in phishing. And a wrapped link hides where it actually goes, so nobody you send it to can tell what they are about to open.

AMP links have their own version of this. Share one and the recipient sees a Google URL for content that is not Google's, and the publisher's own site does not get the visit.

Doing it manually

Find q= or url= in the wrapped link, copy everything after it up to the next &, and URL-decode it: %3A is :, %2F is /, %3F is ?. For AMP, delete the google.com/amp/s/ prefix and put https:// in front of what remains.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Why do Google links start with google.com/url?

It is a redirect wrapper. Google routes the click through its own domain to log it and verify the destination before forwarding you. The real URL is encoded in the q or url parameter.

What is gclid?

gclid is the Google Click Identifier. It is appended when you arrive from a Google ad so the advertiser can attribute your visit to a specific click. The page works fine without it.

Can I get the original URL back from a Google AMP link?

Yes. The publisher's real URL sits directly after the google.com/amp/s/ prefix, so it can be reconstructed without a lookup.

Does removing usg and ved break the link?

Not once the link has been unwrapped. Those tokens only exist to sign and describe the redirect itself, so they are meaningless on the direct URL.