Create Google Short URLs without the Toolbar

Goo.gl Short URL - http://goo.gl/V9Ep

Goo.gl is a new URL shortening service from Google but unlike bit.ly or tinyURL, goo.gl cannot be used as a stand-alone service for shrinking URLs of web pages.

That means you can cannot create short URLs on-demand - you either need to install the Google Toolbar or, if you have a blog, you can integrate FeedBurner with Twitter and it will automatically create Google short links for all your new posts (not the old content).

Shorten URLs using goo.gl

There’s however a new extension that you may use to create Goo.gl short URLs for the web page you are currently viewing inside Chrome without requiring the toolbar. Or, if you are using a browser other than Chrome, you can use this online service to shrink the URL of any web page using goo.gl.

Create Google Short Links

Internally, this extension (source) sends a POST request to goo.gl/api with the user-agent parameter set to toolbar@google.com and gets back the Google short URL in JSON. It would be awesome if the developer can convert this extension into a bookmarklet.

function shortify(url)
{
var auth_token = getUrlShorteningRequestParams(url);
var urlEscaped = escape(url).replace(/\\+/g,"%2B");

xmlhttp.open("POST", "http://goo.gl/api/url?
user=toolbar@google.com&url=" + urlEscaped + "&auth_token=" + auth_token, false);
xmlhttp.onload = xmlhttpLoad;
xmlhttp.send(null);
}

Related: Google Short URLs for Google Apps’ Domains

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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