You might have been irritated by the following scenario: you want the actual URL of some google search result, e.g. in order to send it to someone else or to reference it. However google search results don’t show the actual link, they show something like http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.undp.org%2F&ei=fpebT4_7OIjlrAfHodlM&usg=AFQjCNE8SMunoXSWyOJM6pH88FazC1es0g&sig2=TFUL9CP1B01Xkddf8sjUKg etc.

If your browser is set to open pdfs separately and not in the browser, it is tricky to solve this problem with pdf links. One way to avoid this is to install the firefox extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-link-fix/. Then the links will show up correctly.

Here’s another solution — Right-click on a google search result and save-target-as c:/temp/url.txt. (You can also save it to Desktop.) Then open the url.txt and look for “http”