Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google+ doesn’t offer vanity URLs for user profiles, making it more difficult to share your Google+ Profile with your friends. Instead, Google uses a long string of numbers to denote users (e.g. 117691391504351341685).
The reason Google+ doesn’t use vanity URLs is because those could lead to spammers figuring out the email addresses of millions of Google+ users (since many Google Accounts are linked to Gmail accounts).
Of course, this leads to a problem: you don’t want to be telling people to type in a long string of numbers to find your Google+ Profile. That’s where Gplus.to comes in. This simple little app lets you create a short URL for your Google+ page, making it easy to share with your friends. Mine, for example, is Gplus.to/BillCrosby, which is much easier to remember than a random strong of numbers.
Gplus.to fills a gap that Google+ doesn’t currently address. Should Google give users the ability to create vanity URLs, or is it too much of a privacy concern because of its connection to Gmail? Feel free to let us know in the comments.
Problem: This is only a temporary solution.
Question: How can we mask the long URL #’s with the temporary solution?
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Once I have the shorten name, it directs me over to the Google+ page, but then it pops back to the original name.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts on solving this.
–CR
Thanks Bill! I have been looking for how to get a Google+ vanity url for a while. Great article once again!
Superb Brian, glad it helps!
Thank you for sharing this great piece of info, Bill.
Hey, great that you enjoyed it and it was helpful Tina.
Where were you the last months; there are hundreds of posts already. So quite in vain i must say.