This little Greasemonkey script cleans up Google’s result page by replacing the unnecessary redirections by real links. So long links such as http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2F&ei=DhDmTsjsBa3NmQX_861Y&usg=AFQjCNFHgSSEjuDwVNzzn3fXd7YJysmFGQ&sig2=0t1GLYrrHjniRivye-Jb1Q will be replaced by just http://www.wired.com

Why install this script?

– It allows copying a link directly from Google’s result page (otherwise you need to open the link, then copy it in the browser’s bar).

– In some countries, Google can be very slow so not only you have to wait a long time for the search page to load, but you then have to wait for Google to do its redirection. This script makes Google slightly faster by skipping this unnecessary step.

The script can be downloaded there:

Download Google Links Cleanser script

And the source code is below:

// ==UserScript==

// @name          Google Links Cleanser

// @namespace     http://pogopixels.com

// @description   Convert the redirection links in Google's search results to direct links.

// @include       http://*.google.*
// @include       https://*.google.*

// ==/UserScript==

// parseUri 1.2.2
// (c) Steven Levithan <stevenlevithan.com>
// MIT License
function parseUri(a){var b=parseUri.options,c=b.parser[b.strictMode?"strict":"loose"].exec(a),d={},e=14;while(e--)d[b.key[e]]=c[e]||"";d[b.q.name]={};d[b.key[12]].replace(b.q.parser,function(a,c,e){if(c)d[b.q.name][c]=e});return d}parseUri.options={strictMode:false,key:["source","protocol","authority","userInfo","user","password","host","port","relative","path","directory","file","query","anchor"],q:{name:"queryKey",parser:/(?:^|&)([^&=]*)=?([^&]*)/g},parser:{strict:/^(?:([^:\/?#]+):)?(?:\/\/((?:(([^:@]*)(?::([^:@]*))?)?@)?([^:\/?#]*)(?::(\d*))?))?((((?:[^?#\/]*\/)*)([^?#]*))(?:\?([^#]*))?(?:#(.*))?)/,loose:/^(?:(?![^:@]+:[^:@\/]*@)([^:\/?#.]+):)?(?:\/\/)?((?:(([^:@]*)(?::([^:@]*))?)?@)?([^:\/?#]*)(?::(\d*))?)(((\/(?:[^?#](?![^?#\/]*\.[^?#\/.]+(?:[?#]|$)))*\/?)?([^?#\/]*))(?:\?([^#]*))?(?:#(.*))?)/}}

function isMangledLink(url) {
	var parsed = parseUri(url);
	if (url.indexOf("/url?") < 0) return false;
	if (url.indexOf("&url=") < 0) return false;
	return true;
}

parseUri.options.strictMode = true;

// Get all the anchors
var tags = document.getElementsByTagName('a');

for (i = 0; i < tags.length; i++) {
	var tag = tags[i];
	var href = tag.getAttribute("href");
	
	// Remove the onmousedown events used for tracking
	var onmousedownAttribute = tag.getAttribute("onmousedown");
	if (onmousedownAttribute && onmousedownAttribute.indexOf("return rwt") >= 0) tag.removeAttribute("onmousedown");
	
	if (!isMangledLink(href)) continue;	
	
	// Try to extract the real URL
	var parsed = parseUri(href);	
	var realUrl = "";
	var query = parsed.query.split("&");
	for (var j = 0; j < query.length; j++) {
		var items = query[j].split("=");
		if (items[0] == "url") { // We found the real URL
			realUrl = unescape(items[1]);
			break;
		}
	}
	
	if (realUrl == "") continue; // Skip it if we didn't find the real URL
	
	tag.setAttribute("href", realUrl);
}

Update 2012-02-16:

Script has been updated so that full URLs are not required (thanks to anonymous in the comments).

Tags: google, greasemonkey, script, search

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2011 at 15:55 and is filed under JavaScript. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.