Using Google as a URL Shortener

Posted byDaniel HoangPosted inThoughts

If you use twitter, you’ll know to use an URL shortener service to reduce your character count to keep under twitter’s 140 character limit. Most people use one of the many shortener services such at bit.ly.

Google has recently opened up it’s URL shortener service to the public. Previously, it was limited to its own services such as Google Docs. To start, simply go to http://goo.gl. Enter the URL you want to shorten and click the Shorten button.

Google will generate a URL with the form: http://goo.gl/xxxxx where xxxxx is a unique identifier. If you sign in with your Google account, you’ll also get special tracking services and a custom QR code.

As an added bonus, any math wiz out there that can figure out the number of unique URLs that Google can generate with this new format. It looks like it uses numbers, lower, and upper case letters.

Published by Daniel Hoang

Daniel Hoang is a visual leader, storyteller, and creative thinker. As an experienced management consultant, he believes in a big picture approach that includes strong project leadership, creative methods, change management, and strategic visioning. He uses a range of visual tools to communicate business challenges, solutions, and goals. His change strategy is to build "tribes" of supporters and evangelists to drive change in culture and organization. Daniel is an avid technologist and futurist and early adopter.