A little while ago Google announced they had purchased the g.co domain name, and were planning to use it exclusively for linking to Google-owned sites. Their existing URL shortening service, goo.gl, was to remain for user-generated links to any URL they pleased.
Today Google has announced they are putting their no-doubt-expensive investment (single-letter .co domains have a base price of $1.5 million) to work, beginning with Google Maps. When a short URL is requested for a map location the user will be given a URL in the form g.co/maps/xxxx.
Presumably this format (rather than the format g.co/xxxxxx, as employed by the likes of Twitter’s t.co) is to allow users to know what kind of link they are clicking, and to allow Google to offer links to their other services in a similar format. For example, g.co/docs for public Google Docs, or g.co/news for a Google News item.
Link shortening services have come under scrutiny in recent months for not being able to police what content is being linked to using their service – you’ll have no doubt experienced many instances of bit.ly Twitter spam. It is this lack of confidence that prompted Google to only allow their own sites to generate g.co links – so users know they are being linked to a legitimate Google site.
Twitter also rolled out its t.co URL shortening service to all links over 18 characters across their website last week, which will allow marketers to better track visits from Twitter (previously incoming links from Twitter could be spread across numerous URL shorteners such as is.gd, bit.ly or tinyurl.com, making tracking a nightmare). Although this will help marketers work out their ROI, it does little to combat URL shortener spam, which remains rampant on Twitter.
