From August 23, 2024 onwards, Google will display a notification when clicking on these links, to warn of the upcoming change.
In a grey and gloomy setting, an old computer with the Google G on its screen is surrounded by chains in Google's corporate colours, broken and old. They represent links shortened with Google URL Shortener, which will stop working as of 25 August 2025.
July 22, 2024
By Maria Bastero
Content Manager at Marketing4eCommerce
GGoogle has just announced that links shortened with its now-defunct Google URL Shortener tool (also known as Goo.gl) will no longer work as of August 25, 2025. After this, they will no longer direct to the desired website, but will instead display a 404 error.
In its statement , the technology giant has also reported that, as a precaution, starting August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will begin to show, to those who click on them, an interstitial notification in which this decision is announced .
Notification of goo.gl links that will be displayed starting August 23, 2024 to inform that they will stop working on August 25, 2025
This decision by Google will affect millions of redirects uganda number data according to SEO consultant Glenn Gabe on X. According to data from Majestic, a third-party link tracking tool, there are about 3.6 billion links that match the structure “http://goo.gl” .
The last vestiges of Google URL Shortener will disappear forever
This Google service was created in 2009 and was used to create shorter links than the original ones. It was a very useful tool during the boom of social networks; especially with the Twitter platform, which at that time only allowed writing messages of a maximum of 140 characters.
However, following the emergence of multiple new URL shortening tools, Google decided to discontinue its service. Thus, from April 13, 2018, Goo.gl stopped accepting more users and in March 2019 the service was permanently removed from existing users, thus joining other Google products withdrawn from the market .
Since then, all links continued to redirect to their destination , but this will no longer be the case as of August 25, 2025 and the links will start to generate errors. Therefore, it will be important for you to review the links on your website, detect if you have any shortened with this tool (this will have the structure https://goo.gl/ *) and replace it. Otherwise, Google could interpret it as a lack of quality and reliability, which can negatively affect your positioning in search results. Although 404 errors do not directly result in penalties from Google, a large number of errors can trigger a manual review of the site. If the site is considered not to offer a good user experience, this could lead to penalties or a drop in ranking.