# Is there a reason I cannot use Google's URL shortener on Sports Illustrated links? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 22, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883 "2016-03-22T19:38:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/21 "2016-03-23T17:50:36Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > 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. Yeah, sorry, but some of us on the internet have, over time, developed the ability to use our brains in order to evaluate the likelihood of a link being genuine or problematic. For example, we understand that some individuals are more trustworthy than others, either because they have some independent credibility of their own, or because we have come to know them over an extended period of time and trust them not to link us to dodgy websites. If a long-term member here at the Dope, someone that i’ve interacted with on dozens or even hundreds of occasions, and who has hundreds or even thousands of posts, uses a URL shortener, then i will generally be happy to click on it. If one of my tech-savvy Facebook friends uses one, i will again understand why, and will use the link. And if one of my friends sends me an email with a shortened link, and i can see that it’s clearly a genuine email from the person in question, then i know it will be fine. It’s a matter of making an intelligent evaluation. If you have trouble making these same evaluations about your friends and online correspondents, by all mean continue to reject shortened URLs, but as \*\*Flyer \*\*says, this type of paranoia is outdated, unproductive, and probably won’t do very much at all to prevent problems. ---
**Author:** ![troub](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troub/32/14802_2.png) [@troub](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/troub)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/22 "2016-03-23T18:33:42Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > …The only legitimate reason to use a URL shortener is if you’re including it in a character-limited medium like SMS or Twitter… Nope, a lot of times people might use them to gather analytics about whether anyone’s actually using the link or not. I think bit.ly (and I _know_ Goo.gl) will track how many times the URL has been clicked/used, which lets you drop a link somewhere where you don’t control the analytics code (Twitter, email, message board comment…) and still be able to tell if people are clicking through or not. People might find that useful in all kinds of ways. Back when I was experimenting with QR codes at work, instead of encoding the “real” URL into them, I used goo.gl URLs instead so I could track whether anyone ever actually scanned the code (protip: no, nobody scans these things). There are also browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome that will show you expanded information for shortened URLs if you’re concerned about it. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/23 "2016-03-24T02:27:06Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > I know what “malware” is, but what’s “unwanted porn”? Porn at work. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/24 "2016-03-24T13:16:41Z")
I still don’t understand the use (other than link click tracking). Inserting a link here in a post, or inserting a link in an email allows you to show whatever text you want. The whole text of the link doesn’t have to be shown unless someone hovers over it. What good is going to another site and getting a shortened link and then inserting THAT link? ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/25 "2016-03-24T14:14:17Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Porn at work. :eek: That’s not necessarily unwanted porn. Inconvenient, perhaps. Unwanted? Arguable. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/26 "2016-03-24T14:18:30Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I still don’t understand the use (other than link click tracking). Inserting a link here in a post, or inserting a link in an email allows you to show whatever text you want. The whole text of the link doesn’t have to be shown unless someone hovers over it. What good is going to another site and getting a shortened link and then inserting THAT link? Not every online medium allows HTML. You have to use HTML to hyperlink text. Facebook doesn’t allow it, neither does Twitter. Email clients don’t inherently allow it and/or people generally don’t know how to use that feature of their client if it exists. My friend was interviewed for an article the other day and the journalist asked her for a link to her website. She doesn’t have a proper site like [hername.com](http://hername.com), but she has a Flickr page which has a URL like [https://www.flickr.com/photos/65123744@N02](https://www.flickr.com/photos/65123744@N02) She didn’t want that in the newspaper so we used a link shortener to create a nice short link for her to pass along that not only looked better in the newspaper but people could easily type it in to their computer or phone, or even remember it to use later (you can customize links like bit.ly/MyLink) ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/27 "2016-03-24T14:25:37Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I still don’t understand the use (other than link click tracking). Inserting a link here in a post, or inserting a link in an email allows you to show whatever text you want. The whole text of the link doesn’t have to be shown unless someone hovers over it. What good is going to another site and getting a shortened link and then inserting THAT link? Sometimes, usually seen in emails but perhaps elsewhere too, those long URLs wrap to a second, third or seventh line or more. One example is Google maps where you route from point A to point B and include 8 places along the way - often these are ridiculously long. What often happens is that in the \\ the link gets broken, so that the hyperlink only contains the first part of the full URL. The rest of the URL is displayed but is not part of the hyperlink. The hyperlink is therefore broken. SDMB posts conveniently truncate long URLs. See my post above, where that happens in this line: > [@](#): > > Is so much nicer than this: [Google Maps](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Titus+Canyon+Rd,+Beatty,+NV+89003/The+Racetrack,+California/@36.8170246,-117.1818363,8z/data=!4m8!4m7!1m2!1m1!1s0x80b8a148013b6d0f:0x9109081ac8445489!1m2!1m1!1s0x80bf6098557ef0cd:0x769843635ebc2486!3e0) Edited – and even that was snipped here on SDMB. Click on that link, and when that page opens, copy the full URL into any text editor and you’ll see how long it truly is. Add a few more destinations to that map routing in Death Valley, and you’ll see how long the new URL can become. Edited: **ZipperJJ** got this, too. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/28 "2016-03-24T16:28:06Z")
Thanks for the info. I don’t use Twitter so I don’t know about it. Whenever I add a link to Facebook, the actual page is shown and I delete the link. Shortened URLs in the newspaper are better, that’s a good one. I use Outlook, there is a nice “Insert Hyperlink” that allows me to put whatever display text I want, regardless of how long the link is. Here at the Dope, a long URL can be displayed like this: [map](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Titus+Canyon+Rd,+Beatty,+NV+89003/The+Racetrack,+California/@36.8170246,-117.1818363,8z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80b8a148013b6d0f:0x9109081ac8445489!2m2!1d-116.8699916!2d36.8563998!1m5!1m1!1s0x80bf6098557ef0cd:0x769843635ebc2486!2m2!1d-117.5602581!2d36.6810697!3e0) and I didn’t have to go to any link short site or anything. A lot of security rules were put into place to stop HTML emails because people would place malicious links with safe-looking link text. It was still possible to see what the actual link was. With this link-shortened stuff, now there is no way to tell what the actually link is. Is there? ---
**Author:** ![BorgHunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@BorgHunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BorgHunter)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/29 "2016-03-24T17:35:10Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > With this link-shortened stuff, now there is no way to tell what the actually link is. Is there? If you’re tech-savvy enough to use a command line, and you’re truly worried (and not on Windows), you can use curl. Something like this: ```auto curl -Is https://goo.gl/tcjC0B | grep -i ^Location ``` If it outputs something, you’ll see where the redirect goes. If it doesn’t, either it doesn’t redirect, or that URL shortener does something weird like JavaScript instead of an HTTP 301. (Obviously, this isn’t a particularly elegant approach.) ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/30 "2016-03-24T18:31:01Z")
Definitely seems to make Rick Rolling easier tho! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/31 "2016-03-24T19:35:08Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Yeah, sorry, but some of us on the internet have, over time, developed the ability to use our brains in order to evaluate the likelihood of a link being genuine or problematic. > > For example, we understand that some individuals are more trustworthy than others, either because they have some independent credibility of their own, or because we have come to know them over an extended period of time and trust them not to link us to dodgy websites. > > If a long-term member here at the Dope, someone that i’ve interacted with on dozens or even hundreds of occasions, and who has hundreds or even thousands of posts, uses a URL shortener, then i will generally be happy to click on it. If one of my tech-savvy Facebook friends uses one, i will again understand why, and will use the link. And if one of my friends sends me an email with a shortened link, and i can see that it’s clearly a genuine email from the person in question, then i know it will be fine. It’s a matter of making an intelligent evaluation. > > If you have trouble making these same evaluations about your friends and online correspondents, by all mean continue to reject shortened URLs, but as \*\*Flyer \*\*says, this type of paranoia is outdated, unproductive, and probably won’t do very much at all to prevent problems. And when your long-term friend gets hacked, and his email client sends out emails to his whole contact list containing a shortened url, will you use your obviously more intelligent evaluation mechanisms to determine that he was hacked and NOT click a link that doesn’t show where it’s actually going? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/32 "2016-03-24T19:41:54Z")
I’ve gotten obviously hacked emails from contacts. Believe me, it’s easy to tell they’re not really from my contact. (For one thing, these are people who have not sent any email to me in years.) ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/33 "2016-03-24T20:06:28Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I’ve gotten obviously hacked emails from contacts. Believe me, it’s easy to tell they’re not really from my contact. (For one thing, these are people who have not sent any email to me in years.) Yeah, easy for you. Easy for me. Easy for many people I’m sure. Not easy for the dumbass who clicks a link at work and causes a whole weekend of investigation and recovery ☹ Anyway, this is straying off topic. Was the definitive answer that Google’s URL shortener was programmed this way? ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/34 "2016-03-24T20:23:22Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I’ve gotten obviously hacked emails from contacts. Believe me, it’s easy to tell they’re not really from my contact. (For one thing, these are people who have not sent any email to me in years.) Agree here. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883/35 "2016-03-24T20:24:24Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Yeah, easy for you. Easy for me. Easy for many people I’m sure. Not easy for the dumbass who clicks a link at work and causes a whole weekend of investigation and recovery ☹ > > Anyway, this is straying off topic. Was the definitive answer that Google’s URL shortener was programmed this way? That’s my takeaway from this thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-reason-i-cannot-use-googles-url-shortener-on-sports-illustrated-links/749883.md?page=1)