I use URL shorteners quite a bit in my work and this is the first time I’ve seen a URL refuse to be shortened. As in, the shortener said it could not do it. Google’s shortener no less.
Then go to https://goo.gl/ (Google’s shortener) and paste that SI URL just above and try to shorten it. You get a message that says the URL cannot be shortened.
Note that you CAN shorten that URL using Bitly and it returns a vanity shortened URL (in this case http://on.si.com/1RhEBMV).
This amazes me. I can’t believe Google would capitulate to someone on something like this. What’s more I can find no info on the internet about either Sports Illustrated or others being able to do this. That is also a first for me.
There’s definitely something on Google’s end preventing this.
If I put in the SI link, I get the message you get. But if I choose “copy link location” from your post, I can make a link that works, presumably because that link starts with " http://api.viglink.com/api/ "
For the record, i will NOT click on a link that uses a URL shortener, and I always advised against it when I was dong tech work for a school system. Good way to get hit with malware or inundated with unwanted porn.
That’s an interesting idea (that the problem is the two-letter domain name). So I tested it, by editing the Sports Illustrated link in the OP, changing si.com to sportsillustrated.com. Once I did that, I was able to use the Google tool.
Goo.gl appears to be programmed to reject si.com … You can modify the domain name of the SI url , and it gets rejected. You can try really simple URL’s at si.com and they get rejected.
How interesting. I use URL shorteners all the time, mostly goo.gl and tinyURL. I just had to try it myself, because I’d never encountered “This URL cannot be shortened. Please try another one.”
This. The only legitimate reason to use a URL shortener is if you’re including it in a character-limited medium like SMS or Twitter. Otherwise I assume you’re obfuscating the actual site URL for a reason and I ain’t going to click it.
There’s no character limit in email. And if the full URL won’t fit in a tweet, then Twitter isn’t the proper channel to send it. Just because your favorite tool is a shiny new hammer doesn’t mean every problem is a nail.
NEVER click on a link if you can’t tell where it goes without clicking first.
I think that this flavor of paranoia is becoming outdated. We have all sorts of companies trying to hide spyware in otherwise legitimate downloads; we have drive-by downloads from compromised ads; we have phishing attacks – all these are pushing out the old methods of delivering malware. A full-length link won’t do you any good if you’re too lazy to notice that it’s a cleverly-misspelled variation of a legitimate site.
What’s more is that many systems allow you to see the actual URL that you will be taken to. I always check this before clicking on a hidden or shortened/dereferenced link.