Keep your URL Short

If you want me to visit your website, please keep the domain URL short.

You are more likely to remember ariwriter.com over ariwriterandbloggeraboutsocialmedia.com, right?

I want my URL, as part of my personal brand, to be short enough I can print it on a business card and be memorable for you to relay to a colleague.

Wouldn’t you want the same for your business?

The long and short of Google

Sometimes it is necessary for companies to purchase long(er) domain names to protect their intellectual property and prevent typing errors.

Dell, for instance, owns del.com and delll.com, both of which point to dell.com.

But Dell is nothing compared to Google.

Google owns about 520 domain names, including derivatives gogle.com, google.com, gooogle.com, gooooogle.com, and gooooooogle.com.

After noticing Google’s domain-purchasing behavior in late-2005, David Golumbia, an assistant professor in media studies, English, and linguistics at the University of Virginia, conducted a social experiment.

David is the registered owner of one of the longest domain names in the world:

goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com

That’s google with 59 o’s.

“I looked to see if they owned the version with the maximum number of characters — and it was available,” he writes in an e-mail to me. “So, I snatched it up!”

How to shorten a URL with 59 o’s

You don’t want to type that 63-character domain, not including the www and com, every time, do you?

You want a short URL.

Granted, I set these up in advance, but if you click on any of the following “short URLs,” you will be magically transported to David’s registered domain:

http://is.gd/2DBh
http://rurl.org/zuk
http://kurl.nl?3BDF
http://doiop.com/ebz7sa
http://snipurl.com/3pkvb
http://tinyurl.com/2xkg5n
http://dwarfurl.com/804ed
http://shorl.com/lehijygruhody

There are about 50 other variants (if not more) for services that provide URL truncation services.

This comes in handy if you want to shorten any of the following URLs, for instance:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?1c=Washington+&1s=DC&1a=1600+Pennsylvania+Ave&2c=New+York&2s=NY&2a=760+United+Nations+Plaza

http://cgi.ebay.com/Pre-columbian-West-Mexico-Jalisco-Ameca-Style-Male_W0QQitemZ220279331593QQihZ012QQcategoryZ13760
QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=genome&FIELD1=&co1=AND&TERM2=theory&FIELD2=&d=PG01

For more information

Lee Matthews compares 10 URL truncation services and Jane Copland details even more services, along with the benefits and drawbacks of each short URL.

Regarding his spoof domain, I asked David if he had plans for the future as the site currently redirects searches to google.com.

David responded he wanted to use his interests in language and computing to develop something, but he wasn’t sure what.

Madonna said, “Isn’t it funny how preoccupied we’ve become with the lives of others?”

In the case of Google and Golumbia, she was right.

Thank you for returning to my blog! If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, email delivery, or Kindle subscription. You may also reach me on Twitter @ariherzog.

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