Brave Search will replace direct destination links with encrypted links in the coming days, a change Brave says will curb automated scraping without revealing which result a person clicks. Browsers will retrieve a key, decode the destination and open the site, with Brave promising the same experience when users select results. The company attributes the change to scraping traffic that has brought slower searches and additional CAPTCHAs for users.
For anyone copying a result to save or share, the change introduces a practical drawback: the copied address will point to a redirect rather than the destination site. Those redirects can expire, making them unsuitable for lasting bookmarks, according to Brave. Users who disable JavaScript face a separate privacy tradeoff, because they will get a conventional redirect that lets Brave see the destination they select.
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Brave says the pressure increased after Google introduced GOTO, which sends search-result clicks through a Google redirect before opening the destination. According to Brave, that made Google's results harder to scrape, particularly for requests needing fresh results, and pushed some scraping operations toward Brave Search's independent index. Brave reports bursts reaching several thousand requests each second, straining servers and prompting stricter bot defenses that also affect legitimate searches.
The new system gives each result a separate encryption key, which the browser must request from Brave Search before opening that link. The browser masks its request using a random number, allowing Brave to supply the necessary response without identifying the selected result, the company says. Once the browser recovers the key and decrypts the address, it connects directly to the destination rather than sending the visit through Brave Search.
Brave says the cryptographic method, called a partially oblivious pseudorandom function, still lets it identify the originating results page and the time a link was opened. It says the system conceals the particular link selected while allowing it to count key requests for each page. Scrapers seeking every destination would therefore need a separate key request for each result, increasing the cost of bulk collection, according to Brave.
Brave also acknowledges that attackers could exploit the reputation of its redirect links to send people to harmful destinations. Its countermeasures include redirect revocation, expiration controls and an intermediate warning page. For automated access, the company offers the Brave Search API, with personal and hobby access free and commercial access paid.
