Google’s Own URL Shortening Service Goo.gl – Set it up with Feedburner and Google Toolbar

There was a time that people use to bid thousands of dollars for killer domain names and my how the times have changed. Now with the URL Shortening Services revolution -we have bids for shorter domain names – the shorter the better.

Google has just jumped the bandwagon and stated its own URL Shortening service at Goo.gl.

Is there any area on the Internet where Google isn’t present? You never know what projects go on in the office at Mountain View, CA, but with each new project they push the web towards better innovation.

This new service Goo.gl, isn’t available for broader consumer use, but just for Google Products. Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner.Google promises 3 benefits of using Goo.gl:

• Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime
• Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages
• Speed – fast resolution of short URLs

Using Goo.gl with Google Toolbar is easy. Since its the default URL Shortner for Google, the toolbar uses Goo.gl by default.

Setting up and Customizing Goo.gl to work with Feedburner:

Now you can connect your RSS feed to the real-time social web!

With the Socialize feature in FeedBurner (under the Publicize option) all updates from your blog would be automatically posted to your Social Media Profiles. Currently in the Feedburner dashboard only Twitter is supported,  but more would be added soon.

You need to add your Twitter Account, where you would like updates from your blog to be published.

The appearance of the “Tweet” can be configured. Some of the Options are:

• Title only – Only the Title of the Post will be tweeted.
• Title and Body – Title and initial part of the post would be tweeted.
• Body only – No title, only the initial part of the post is tweeted, the first sentence.

You can select if the “goo.gl” short url should be added to the tweet by checking the include link option. If its unchecked no link for the post would be shown.

If you leave room for Re-Tweets, the original Tweet would have about 110 -120 characters, leaving some room for a Re-Tweet comment.

Adding #Hash Tags:

The tags you add to your post can be published along with the Tweet Update via Goo.gl. If your post titles are generally long, you should avoid using them.

Additional Text:

You can either add a Prefix or add text at the end of the Tweet. Something like “New at the Blog:” as a Prefix or your Twitter handle @VikiTech at the end of the Tweet.

Item Selection:

The Item selection option lets you exclude posts with certain keywords from being Tweeted. For Eg, A Maintainance related posts can be excluded by adding that Keyword.

You can also, specify, number of posts that are tweeted simultaneously – There is an option to select and tweet, anywhere between 1 to 8 posts in one go.

Item Preview:

Not sure how your tweets would look ? Don’t worry, we get the preview of how our links would look like at the bottom of the section. Customize it according to your needs and Fire away.

There is huge scope for the URL Shortening service considering the number of Google services present online. It would be fun where and how Google uses this Newly launched service!