URL Shortener Added to Google Places
Update: Google just officially announced the short URL on Maps (about 10 hours after my original post)
About a month ago Google announced a new URL shortcut, that was to link only to official company’s products – g.co. One of these products is Google Places and they managed to find the right place to use it – to shorten the very long and hard to use Place pages URLs.
The option shows up when one clicks on the chain-like hyperlink sign at the upper right corner of a Place page. They are given the option to get a “short URL”, which would be much easier to be used when sending emails, messages, or asking for help in the Google Places Help Forum.
The URL consists of the g.co domain name + /maps/ + 4 signs, which are the part unique for each URL. These signs could be either letters or numbers. As it seems this link is permanent. This short URL is in the same format for every country.
The overall number of combinations seems to be 36x36x36x36 = 1,679,616 which, at least to me, seems like a very small number. I was unable to find any URL with capital letters, so my calculations are based on what I noticed up to now.
Hurrah! At last! Thanks for letting us know, Nyagoslav
You are welcome Joe
I think that’s a really great inclusion, but I’m a bit puzzled about the number of short URLs…
Ah, good one Google! Since the shortened URLs contains the keyphrase that was searched as well as the cid, there’s no question they will run out of those 1,679,616 options. They’ll probably just add an extra character when that happens.
Although, when you think about the number of people that would actually use this feature, the 1,679,616 will probably last them quite a while.
I really think this number is rather insufficient and in a few months it will be over. I was wondering why they just didn’t add capital letters, that would make the things much simpler imo
i find the shorter sometimes doesn’t work. i hope they offer two options like in youtube – shortener version then long link.
Yeah, I think the idea of this short URL is still not developed fully, and Google released one more betaish product, way too early before they test its functions fully…