ASO clean url extractor

This little spreadsheet accomplishes the otherwise fiddly task of extracting a clean URL from a Google search result. 

This is a particular problem with links to pdf files such as a journal article (possibly depending what browser and what browser settings are being used) because the full URL may never appear in the browser address bar. This means the specific locattion of the downloadable paper is unknown. The location is important for the following reasons:

• ASO would normally provide a link to the page from whence a file is downloadable, not directly to the file itself.
• We would need to know the copyright status which would be indicated by the location eg the subject document might be a version stored in an institutional repository or accessible from the author's website  from  where it can be freely downloaded, or it might be somewhere where the copyright position is less clear.

You can download the xlsx file attached below and copy and paste any url into the source cell in the spreadsheet; you can then copy the resultant clean url wherever you want.