Google's New Redirect Links Just Made Click Tracking Pricier
Google quietly rolled out a new link format on August 26 called "goto" links. They're redirects, and every time a third-party tracker resolves one to figure out where a click actually came from, that resolution costs an extra server request. PPC Land reported that SISTRIX, one of the bigger measurement firms in paid search, is already building a workaround because the added cost is real enough to notice. Google confirmed the change. Other tracking vendors are staring at the same bill.
Here's why that's your problem and not just an ad-tech trade story. Your agency's click and lead attribution for Google Ads leasing campaigns runs through exactly this kind of tracking layer. If the tool your agency or your CRM's ad integration uses has to resolve a goto link for every click, and that resolution now costs more, someone pays for it. Either the vendor eats it quietly, passes it to you as a line-item increase, or cuts corners on how many clicks actually get tracked. None of those three options is one you want to discover by accident three months from now when your cost-per-lead number looks great for reasons nobody can explain.
The part that should actually worry you isn't the extra pennies per click. It's the third option: silently sampling less, or resolving fewer redirects, in order to hold pricing steady. That's how a leasing team ends up reporting a phantom lead spike that's really just a tracking gap, and a regional asking why applications didn't follow the "improvement." Nobody invented that number. The tool just stopped counting some of the clicks it used to.
- 01Does our current tracking or attribution vendor resolve Google's goto links, and if so, has that added cost shown up on our invoice yet or is it coming in a future billing cycle?
- 02If there's an added per-click cost from resolving these redirects, are we absorbing it, or will our monthly fee change, and by how much?
- 03Has resolving goto links caused any drop in the percentage of Google Ads clicks that get successfully tracked and attributed in our reporting since August 26?
- 04Can you show me a side-by-side of tracked click volume and reported leads from Google Ads for the four weeks before August 26 versus the four weeks after?
- 05What specific workaround, if any, are you deploying, and does it change how click data is logged or how attribution windows are calculated?
- 06Are any other platforms we use for retargeting or call tracking affected by the same goto link change, and have you checked?
Source: PPC Land, September 3, 2026
A weekly for the people who run apartment marketing.
Get it Tuesdays