# Pulse ยท August 27, 2026 > Google confirms goto redirect URLs on Search, OpenAI pins Shopping to ChatGPT's EU sidebar, and Bing tests an AI Overviews label. Canonical: https://brandonlazovic.dev/pulse/2026-08-27/ Author: Brandon Lazovic Published: 2026-08-27 ## Google confirms it is rolling out google.com/goto passthrough redirects Status: Confirmed | Topics: organic-search-core, crawling-indexing-rendering Google confirmed to Search Engine Roundtable that it is rolling out google.com/goto passthrough redirect URLs across Search results, a test that began in July 2026. Third-party monitoring from Nozzle puts the rollout near 100% across residential IP ranges. The redirect URLs cannot be decoded client-side, forcing any tool reading result links to follow a server-side hop instead of linking straight to the destination page. In plain terms: Instead of a search result linking straight to a website, clicking one now first bounces through a Google-owned link that hides the real URL until your browser follows it. Why it matters: Rank trackers, citation-mining tools, and any scraper reading SERP result URLs now need a redirect-follow step, or their link data breaks silently. Our take: I argued in Google's sign-in wall test that Google reaches for technical enforcement once a legal claim fails, weeks after its DMCA loss to SerpApi. The goto redirect fits the same pattern with a wider reach: it does not just gate deep pagination, it touches every result link, and Nozzle's near-100% figure suggests this one is already live rather than a limited experiment. - [Search Engine Roundtable: Confirmed: Google Search Rolling Out google.com/goto Tracking Parameters](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-goto-tracking-41957.html) ## OpenAI pins a Shopping tab to ChatGPT's sidebar for EU users Status: Observed | Topics: chatgpt-assistants, agentic-commerce, product-feeds-shopping OpenAI added a persistent Shopping tab to ChatGPT's left sidebar for users in the EU, first spotted by Radu Oncescu on X on August 18, 2026 and reverified still live by Search Engine Roundtable on August 27. The tab opens a dedicated shopping search page with visual search but no in-app checkout. No OpenAI blog post, help-center entry, or changelog covering the rollout or its scope beyond the EU turned up in this search. In plain terms: ChatGPT now has a permanent Shopping button in its left-hand menu for EU users, similar to a dedicated tab on a shopping app, that opens a product search page; you still cannot buy anything without leaving the chat. Why it matters: A persistent, always-visible shopping entry point raises the floor for how often ChatGPT users land in commerce discovery, ahead of any wider in-chat checkout return. Our take: I argued in OpenAI's feed pivot that Instant Checkout's retirement pushed ChatGPT commerce toward organic, feed-driven discovery rather than in-chat purchases. A pinned Shopping tab is that bet made visible in the UI: more entry points into the discovery pipeline, still zero entry points into checkout. - [Search Engine Roundtable: OpenAI Pins Shopping To ChatGPT Sidebar](https://www.seroundtable.com/shopping-pinned-to-chatgpt-sidebar-41893.html) ## Bing tests renaming its Copilot Search answer box to AI Overviews Status: Observed | Topics: ai-overviews-ai-mode, organic-search-core Microsoft is testing a label swap on Bing's AI answer box, replacing 'Copilot Search' with 'AI Overviews,' the same term Google uses for its own AI answer feature. The Copilot logo still appears inside the box. First spotted by Sachin Patel on X, then confirmed by Search Engine Roundtable's own screenshots showing the test running alongside the unchanged 'Copilot Search' label served outside it. In plain terms: Bing is testing calling its AI-written answer box 'AI Overviews,' the exact name Google already uses for its own version, even though the two boxes come from different companies and different AI systems. Why it matters: Naming an AI answer box after a competitor's term risks conflating two different platforms' answer surfaces for anyone tracking AI visibility by engine. Our take: A shared label makes AI Overviews function like a category name rather than a Google product name, and that ambiguity cuts both ways. It could normalize the format faster across search engines, or it could make attribution harder for anyone trying to say which platform's answer actually drove a citation. - [Search Engine Roundtable: Bing Tests Renaming Copilot Search Answer To AI Overviews](https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-testing-copilot-search-ai-overviews-41953.html) ## SEJ documents ChatGPT targeting a named subreddit in its search queries Status: Observed | Topics: chatgpt-assistants, organic-search-core Search Engine Journal documented ChatGPT crafting a site-restricted query naming a specific subreddit, r/whatnotapp, with a roughly 10-year time window, then citing six of eight sources from that community out of 48 Reddit threads among 71 total results. A control query on AI live-chat software four days earlier pulled 84 Reddit threads into its results but cited none of them, showing the targeting is query-dependent rather than a blanket Reddit policy. In plain terms: For some questions ChatGPT does not just search Reddit broadly, it writes a search command that targets one specific subreddit by name, the way you might search inside a single forum instead of the whole site. Why it matters: Citation behavior toward a domain like Reddit can flip within the same session depending on how specific the query is, which complicates any single Reddit citation-rate benchmark. Our take: I documented in Does AI prefer Reddit? that OpenAI rejects 99.39% of the Reddit pages it retrieves overall, the single most-rejected domain in Dejan's citation-mining dataset. This one-query anecdote, six of eight citations pulled from a single subreddit, reads as a query-level outlier sitting on top of that system-level rejection habit, not evidence ChatGPT is warming to Reddit broadly. - [Search Engine Journal: ChatGPT Searches Individual Subreddits By Name](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/chatgpt-searches-individual-subreddits-by-name/586925/)