Oct
01
Google Opens Its URL Shortener To The Public
Fri Oct, 2010 by Digital Bus
Social media has provided fertile ground to grow business and personal brands on the web. But in this age of socialized technology people are looking for quick hits of information in under 140 characters.
The dilemma becomes finding a way to optimize your brand on search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing while staying in your character limit. Which is why, Google has recently opened up its web address shortening service to the public.
“Goo.gl was originally a proprietary way for Google to abbreviate its Web addresses within services such as Google News (for saving article links) or Google Maps (for sending a location). The new Goo.gl website will abbreviate your links and store them for you to view later or share with others,” said Damon Brown of CNN.
While many other web shortening services exist, they are not all created equal. The difference between Google’s new service, and others like it, is that it uses a 301 redirect. Meaning that instead of creating a temporary location for your link, it is creating a new permanent location. The benefit of creating a permanent location is that by clicking on the new shortened link a specific code is sent to your browser, and this code tells your browser to go to the new URL location. By doing this, all of your web site’s page rank and previously established search engine position still get passed from the original page to the destination page, just like it would if you were using the original link.
What are competitors of Goo.gl/ using?
Some web shortening services do not use a 301 redirect, and instead use a 302 redirect. 302 redirects are temporary links. This means that all of the SEO, search engine optimization, tactics your business has used to create a high page rank on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing will be lost.
The reason is because 302 redirects tell search engines to read and use the content on the new page, but to keep checking the original URL because the link is temporary and will eventually be reestablished.
Some shortening services that are using 302 redirects include hex.io, eweri and plurl.
The future of Goo.gl
In a highly cluttered market of social media tricks Goo.gl/ has an advantage. The sheer size of Google will make its service internationally known, increasing the already popular search engine’s reach in social media. The question being, will users of sites like bit.ly and ow.ly — who use 301 redirects — remain loyal or will Google take over one more aspect of social media marketing in today’s competitive world?
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