Html Link HREF doesn't resolve until element is inspected

Question

I'd like to make a script to include in a Minimalist Chrome Extension module. The first cut will, on load, find all links on a page, find which links include a blacklisted website name, and then remove itself.

If I query a page that contains a number of clickbait links, I find that the hrefs change upon inspection. If I query all <a> 's, the links in question will show an href that doesn't include the clickbait domain. If I right-click and inspect, then query again, all of the sudden they are there.

What the heck is going on and how can I catch it? CNN articles and Gizmodo articles have links that behave in this way.

Answer 1

Based on link provided in comments above, the href's are changed in other event handlers.

One example from the cnn page looks a bit like:

<a onmousedown="this.href='http://paid.outbrain.com/network/redir?p=Mq...."

You could try parsing the element attributes to look for the blacklisted domains.

Reference MDN Element.attributes