safari opens a start page when opening a link

Go step by step and test.

1. Update Safari, if an update is available. Update may come with bug fixes.

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204416

2. Quit Safari, launch Safari holding the Shift key down.

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203987

3. Startup in Safe Mode. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/start-up-your-mac-in-safe-mode-mh21245/mac.  

    Quote:

    It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. 

    And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and 

    the kernel cache, which are automatically created again as needed.

4. Clear History

    https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/clear-your-browsing-history-sfri47acf5d6/mac

    Please read the article before clearing history, 

    this is like a low level resetting of Safari without affecting passwords and bookmarks.

5. If Safari doesn't open a webpage or isn’t working as expected

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204098

This seems to be a bug in Safari. A work around might be to verify the setting "New tabs open with" is set to Empty Page instead of Start Page.

Go to Safari > Preferences > General > New tabs open with

and set the value to "Empty Page". See if that helps because it worked for me.

I noticed this problem started a few updates ago in Monterey. I hadn't changed any prefs for opening links.

Now I usually have to right click a link and choose Open in New Tab.

Some links don't accept that and Safari tries to look up words in the Link - Maddening !!

For whatever reason I tried solution #2 in this thread ( Start Safari holding Shift ) and now links are

opening correctly. Don't understand why (head scratch) Thanks for the help.