Goo.gl Gets Its Own Website

Google URL Shortner

Google’s URL Shortner was first introduced last December, as a part of Google Toolbar and Feedburner. Since the release, this technology as integrated into multiple other Googleproducts such as News, Blogger, Maps, Picasa Web Albums and Moderator. Despite this, most people agreed that there should be a direct way to use the service. That’s why the company has recently decided to make a separate website for it. The URL Shortner can now be found at goo.gl. As Google explains on its social web blog, there was no intention of overloading the site with a ton of features. It was kept simple, but at the same time Google put a lot of time and effort into making it one of the stablest, most secure and fastest URL shortners on the web.

Goo.gl’s URL shortner has quite a lot of competition on the web, the best known probably being Bit.ly. The site now allows people using Google to shorten and track the URLs that are shared via social media sites (such as Twitter) as well as e-mail. Since there are so many shortners already on the market, one can’t help but wonder if there’s a genuine need for a new one. There isn’t, but Google went ahead and offered one anyway, in an attempt to offer pretty much every web-related service that comes to mind. As Google announced back in December last year, goo.gl was built with a focus on quality. People who are using it will know that every time they shorten a URL it will work. Better yet, it is supposed to work fast and it will keep working.

Just put in the link and get it shortened, fast and easy

According to Google, every time you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you’ll be protected against malware, phishing. This is because the company has used the same technology it’s been using in search or other products. Since the initial release of goo.gl, a lot of time and effort was invested in the core quality of the service. Recently, Google came up with the following conclusions. In terms of stability, the site has had near 100 percent up time since the launch and Google has worked behind the scenes to make the site even more stable and robust. Security is top notch as well because automatic spam detection was added. The spam detection is based on the same type of filtering technology used in Gmail. As a short note, I guess it pays off to have a myriad of services with useful technology on top of a large number of technologies “borrowed” through acquisitions of important small companies. As for the speed of the new URL Shortner, Google claims that it’s more than double than what you’d get about 9-10 months ago.

Despite the overall simple design Google intended to keep, users will also find a set of useful features. Signing in to your Google account will render you a list of URLs that you’ve shortened in the past. By clicking on the Details link which is displayed on the far right of the page next to any of the shortened URLs, you’ll find public, real-time analytics, top referrers, traffic over time and more. The reason why these options are present is that people get to understand what other users were interested in those links and what general opinion they’ve formed on them.

There’s also an extra, “easter egg” feature that was tweeted rather than shared and presented on the blog. According to Mashable, Google engineer Matt Cutts tweeted the easter egg, letting people know that by adding .qr to a shortened goo.gl URL they’ll be able to create a QR code which will redirect to the original URL once scanned. You may also add .info to the goo.gl URL and have analytics displayed.

Google also took the time to thank the application developers who took the time to build extensions and other services integrating the goo.gl technology. Despite the lack of an official API, you’ll now find extensions for Chrome and Firefox. The company added that it has plans to release an official API for goo.gl in the future. Developers will then be able to make use of the API to allow URL shortning, expanding or analytics viewing straight from their own applications. If you’re interested in this new website and want to see how well it works, you’ll just have to type goo.gl in your web browser and hit enter.