Google announced that it will stop serving the Google URL Shortener, so any URL that was set up to redirect using goo.gl, which Google stopped supporting adding new ones back in 2019, will also stop serving.
Starting August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will start displaying an interstitial page for a percentage of existing links to notify users that the link will no longer be supported after August 25, 2025 prior to navigating to the original target page. Then after August 25, 2025, the link will then 404 and not redirect to the right destination URL.
So any redirects you have pointing to your site using goo.gl Google’s service, will die and not be counted.
As Glenn Gabe noted on X, that means billions of URLs on the web will simply vanish and begin to 404. Glenn shared how Majestic knows of 3.6 billion goo.gl links 36 billion historical links in its database.
This is the Interstitial page shown for some goo.gl links starting on August 23, 2024:
Here is the Majestic report from Glenn Gabe:
Google wrote:
Over time the percentage of links that will show the interstitial page will increase until the shutdown date. This interstitial page should help you track and adjust any affected links that you will need to transition as part of this change. We will continue to display this interstitial page until the shutdown date after which all links served will return a 404 response.
Note that the interstitial page may cause disruptions in the current flow of your goo.gl links. For example, if you are using other 302 redirects, the interstitial page may prevent the redirect flow from completing correctly. If you’ve embedded social metadata in your destination page, the interstitial page will likely cause these to no longer show up where the initial link is displayed. For this reason, we advise transitioning these links as soon as possible.
Note: In the event the interstitial page is disrupting your use cases, you can suppress it by adding the query param “si=1” to existing goo.gl links.
It’s ok, there’s only 3.6 billion https://t.co/VjE6xjVgSX links that Majestic has picked up. And 36 billion historically. August 25 will be very interesting. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/O3jUZHFQr3
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 18, 2024
Is this a pain for any of you? I personally won’t be asking anyone with goo.gl links to update them for me.
Forum discussion at X and WebmasterWorld.
