alt Hacker News> The url parameter uses a custom, Google-specific encoding.
So that will be figured out, making the whole exercise void. Google knows this. What is the real goal here?
Replies
Uzazo • yesterday at 11:01 AM
Imagine it being the ID of the database row holding the actual URL. There's no way to figure it out without access to that database.
"Figuring it out" doesn't help if it's encrypted with a key only Google holds or a reference to some database record that you don't have. In either case, the only way to resolve this is to ask Google, which means they can track it as a click (and rate limit etc.).