Google is wrapping your search links in redirects

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ MarketingShot.

In today's MarketingShot:

🔗 Google is wrapping your search links in redirects

📇 X just brought back Lead Gen Ads for you

🌐 New web standard lets AI agents control websites directly

🤖 The trade Desk's zuma gives your ad buys AI easy buttons

🛍️ LTK launches an AI agent that builds creator campaigns for brands

Plus: 💡 6 strategies & tactics, 🎁 6 other news you might like, and 🧰 6 tools.

🔗 Google is wrapping your search links in redirects LINK

Google is adding goto URL parameter redirects to the links in its search results, a technical measure the company says protects against abuse of its search results and its services.

Instead of sending clicks straight to a page's full URL, the links now route through a redirect at google.com/goto?url=[hashURL], which should make it harder for scrapers, third-party tools, and AI engines to pull Google's results.

Derek Perkins from Nozzle reported the change at "nearly a 100% rollout" across several residential IP providers, and third-party Google Search tracking tools may see their reported data affected in the coming days.

📇 X just brought back Lead Gen Ads for you LINK

X has reintroduced lead gen ads, a format Twitter first ran and dropped in 2016, adding a colored call-to-action button to the bottom of promoted posts to drive direct response inside the app.

When a user taps the ad, a native form opens on X that can be filled out and submitted for instant lead capture, and later forms are pre-populated to cut the drop-off caused by redirects and retyping.

The format supports image, video and carousel promotions plus Timeline Takeover ads, and works for goals like booking demos, growing email lists and waitlists, and capturing quote requests and sweepstakes entries.

🌐 New web standard lets AI agents control websites directly LINK

WebMCP, a proposal from the W3C Web Machine Learning Community Group with Google and Microsoft engineers, lets websites declare structured tools that AI agents call directly, replacing the guesswork of reading HTML and clicking through screenshots.

Chrome starts an origin trial in version 149, while Shopify turned on tools across Liquid storefronts in early August and Cloudflare added a dashboard toggle mid-August that brings tool packs without any code changes.

OpenAI announced the WebMCP Challenge on August 25, a ten-day hackathon with $35,000 in prizes running through September 3, and switched on site tools inside the ChatGPT desktop app's built-in browser.

🤖 The trade Desk's zuma gives your ad buys AI easy buttons LINK

The Trade Desk on Thursday released a rebuilt version of Kokai, its tool for media planning, buying, and measurement, adding a set of AI tools and dropping the periodic table-inspired interface as the default view.

The new default interface centers on users' applied settings, a change the company said answers media buyers' complaints about the old programmatic table view that drew wide criticism.

Samantha Ross, senior director of product marketing, said the applied settings view helps clients see where to focus attention, what is limiting scale, and why an ad group is not delivering.

🛍️ LTK launches an AI agent that builds creator campaigns for brands LINK

LTK has added an agentic layer to its Brand Platform that lets marketers describe a business goal in conversation and get back a full campaign build-out, from recommended structure to identified creators moving toward activation.

The system runs on more than 100 billion commerce signals collected over 15 years, and it works in the background too, surfacing trending products, high-potential creators, and campaign optimizations without a marketer asking first.

LTK will start a limited beta in September with beauty, luxury fashion, and apparel partners, ahead of wider availability in Q4 2026; over 3,700 brands already use the platform, where creator investment has grown more than 275%.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> Build content briefs around people, not keywords: situations, using the seven questions of why, when, where and how they feel, so writers address genuine concerns instead of chasing hollow keyword volume.

> The SEO blind spot is what happens after the click: Optimize SEO content for conversions, not just traffic, by understanding customer needs and guiding visitors toward the next step through the funnel.

> Contribution Margin Guides Ecommerce Growth: Track contribution margin, revenue minus all variable costs per order, because rising shipping and fulfillment fees can quietly erase profit despite strong holiday sales.

> How to Connect Claude to Instagram: Connect Claude to Instagram through Metricool's MCP server so the chatbot can read your analytics and schedule posts conversationally instead of manual dashboard work.

> The Practical Guide to Google Analytics 4: Explains how to run Google Analytics 4 day to day, from event-based tracking to knowing that "Key Events" means conversions inside GA4 but stays "Conversions" in Google Ads.

> How to keep a crisis from defining your brand online: Build a strong network of owned and third-party content before a crisis hits, since AI search preserves and amplifies negative narratives long after news cycles fade.

Other news you might like

• Adobe Photoshop adds optional ‘AI Assisted Editor’ mode for fully prompt-based image editingLINK

• Seen an ad with an AI influencer or actor? It may be against the law.LINK

• Google Ads adds reporting for AI-generated product titlesLINK

• Microsoft Advertising Search Term Landing Page Report For AI MaxLINK

• OpenAI to start showing ads on ChatGPT’s free and Go tiers in IndiaLINK

• Bluesky Lets Users Upload 10-Minute VideosLINK

🧰 Trending tools

OpenSEO: an open source Ahrefs alternative offering keyword research, competitor analysis, backlinks, rank tracking, and technical audits on real DataForSEO data.LINK

Fypro: analyzes your TikTok account to auto-generate a matching website, storefront, branded videos, and email list, skipping manual setup entirely.LINK

Prefactor: an evaluation layer that scores agent runs in real time, catching quality regressions and drift before they reach production users.LINK

Glaze by Raycast: creates native Mac apps from plain-language prompts, running offline with dock launch and system-level feature access for quick app building.LINK

Unabyss for Claude: pulls context from Slack, Gmail, Notion, and GitHub into shared memory for MCP tools like Cursor and ChatGPT, so you stop re-explaining yourself.LINK

JustVibe: turns plain-text task descriptions, like planning a Tokyo trip, into working interactive apps instantly, letting you skip writing code entirely.LINK

See you tomorrow for a new dose of ☕️ MarketingShot!