What Decodo provides
Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, is a proxy and web-data provider with managed scraping products.
Its SERP Scraper API collects real-time Google, Bing, Yahoo and Baidu results with geo-targeting and structured or raw outputs; the Google Search scraper explicitly extracts organic rankings, links and SERP features.
Where the redirect matters
The destination URL is a core output. If Google exposes an opaque /goto token rather than the publisher URL in result markup, the service must follow or otherwise resolve that intermediary before returning the link customers expect. At scale, an extra operation per result can increase latency, failure rates and collection cost even when the public API schema stays the same.
/goto?url=[hash]resolve + attributepublisher URL
What Decodo has said
Specific /goto responseDecodo says its managed Web Scraping API already returns final destinations, so API customers do not make the extra redirect request and incur no added per-link charge.
The assurance is scoped to the managed scraping product. Decodo does not disclose whether it follows redirects, reads another response field or applies another resolver; customers using raw proxies or their own parsers do not automatically receive the same protection.
The article accurately explains why an opaque server-side redirect adds work and makes a concrete customer-facing claim. It publishes no output benchmark, result-type coverage table or independent test, while its cited usage growth predates and mixes in other Google restrictions.
Decodo explicitly says there is no added cost per resolved link for Web Scraping API customers. That is not evidence that the company bears no extra collection cost, and it is not a promise covering every proxy product or future tariff.
What is known — and what is not
The source record above is the latest attributable evidence located for Decodo. Its stated outcome is not treated as an independent accuracy audit: the exposure rating still describes the relevant product’s dependence on resolving live Google result URLs.
What customers should monitor
- Organic link fields containing google.com/goto instead of publisher URLs
- Higher response time, empty results or partial SERPs
- Parser, schema, pricing or quota notices concerning Google results
What should remain outside the change
- Non-Google sources where the redirect is not deployed
- Previously stored results that already contain resolved URLs