https://www.google.com/search
After LinkCleanhttps://www.google.com/search?q=link+cleaner
rlz
What is rlz in a Google URL?
What Google says rlz is
This is the one parameter in a Google search URL with an official explanation. Chrome's privacy whitepaper describes a promotional tag, not unique to you or your device, that Chrome inserts in the searches you perform on Google, to measure searches and Chrome usage driven by a particular campaign. It appears as a parameter beginning rlz= when the search comes from the address bar.
According to the same document the tag contains how Chrome was obtained, the week Chrome was installed, and the week the first search was performed. It is generated by a library called RLZ, which Google open-sourced in 2010, and it looks like 1T4ADBR_enUS236US239.
What that reveals in a link you forward
Not who you are. But a forwarded search link with rlz attached does say that you use Chrome, roughly how you got it — a direct download, or bundled with a particular computer or partner — your browser's language and region, and about when you installed it.
None of it concerns the person you are sending the link to, and none of it is needed for the search to run.
Why it is there at all
Distribution measurement. Google pays to have Chrome installed through different channels, and rlz lets it compare how many searches each channel produces. That is a question about Google's marketing, answered with a tag on your searches.
It usually travels with gs_lcrp, Chrome's address-bar statistics, and with the tail Google's page adds itself: sca_esv and ei.
How LinkClean removes it
Default-on, and scoped to Google's search domains (google.com and the main country domains). The same letters on any other site are left alone, and q=, tbm=, udm= and hl= — the parts that decide what the search shows — are never touched.
Frequently asked
Is rlz a unique identifier?
No, by Google's own description: the tag is not unique to you or your device. Many installs from the same channel in the same week share a value.
What does rlz stand for?
Google does not expand the name. RLZ is the name of the open-source library that generates the tag.
Does every browser add rlz?
No. It comes from Google Chrome. A Google search from Safari or Firefox does not carry it.
Does removing rlz affect my search?
No. It is a measurement tag for Google's distribution campaigns. The results are the same without it.
Clean tracking on iPhone, in one tap.
LinkClean strips 250+ vendor-specific tracking parameters from any link, from any app's share sheet — and preserves functional ones like hl, t (YouTube timestamp), and q (search). No account, on-device.
