Install This Extension

With a tip of the hat to John Gruber, DirectLinks is a must-have browser extension for Safari users:

This extension circumvents certain techniques used by Google and Facebook to track link clicks.

When you click a link in Google search results, Google uses JavaScript to replace the actual link with an indirect one, which they use for click tracking. Google then redirects the browser to the actual destination after logging the click. DirectLinks disables the JavaScript that replaces real links with indirect ones, so that when you click a search result link, Safari goes straight to the destination.

The extension does something similar for links in Facebook posts: it removes JavaScript that Facebook uses to track clicks on these links.

I had DirectLinks installed and running within seconds of clicking the link.

It feels good to foil Google and Facebook.