Table of Contents
- Should You Panic About Google’s Upcoming Link Shutdown?
- What Exactly is Goo.gl?
- The Slow Death Process
- Why Google is Pulling the Plug
- What Happens to Your Links
- Simple Steps to Save Your Links
- Step 1: Find all your goo.gl links
- Step 2: Choose a new link shortener
- Step 3: Create new short links
- Step 4: Update everything
- Step 5: Test your new links
- Why This Matters for Your Business
- Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late
Should You Panic About Google’s Upcoming Link Shutdown?
Google is permanently shutting down its goo.gl link shortener service on August 25, 2025. This means every single shortened link you’ve created using goo.gl will stop working and show a 404 error instead.
What Exactly is Goo.gl?
Think of goo.gl as a tool that makes long web addresses shorter. You put in a long link, and it gives you back something like goo.gl/abc123. When someone clicks that short link, they get sent to your original long page.
Google launched this service back in 2009. For over 15 years, people used it to share links on social media, in emails, and anywhere else where short links looked better than long ones.
The Slow Death Process
This shutdown didn’t happen overnight. Google started killing goo.gl slowly:
- March 30, 2018: Google stopped letting new people create accounts
- April 13, 2018: Only existing users could still make new short links
- March 30, 2019: No one could create new short links anymore
- August 23, 2024: Warning pages started appearing on some links
- August 25, 2025: Complete shutdown – all links die
Why Google is Pulling the Plug
Google says people find content differently now compared to 2009. Instead of clicking links on websites, more people use apps, voice search, and mobile devices.
The numbers tell the real story. Google found that over 99% of goo.gl links had zero activity in recent months. Basically, almost nobody was using these links anymore.
What Happens to Your Links
Starting August 25, 2025, every goo.gl link will:
- Stop working completely
- Show a “404 Not Found” error page
- Lose all the traffic they used to send to your website
- Break any marketing campaigns using them
- Cause problems for social media posts with these links
This affects billions of links across the internet. If you have any goo.gl links in:
- Email campaigns
- Social media posts
- Marketing materials
- Website content
- Business cards or printed materials
They will all break permanently.
Simple Steps to Save Your Links
Step 1: Find all your goo.gl links
Look through your websites, social media accounts, and marketing materials. Search for “goo.gl” in your content management systems.
Step 2: Choose a new link shortener
Popular alternatives include:
- Bitly
- TinyURL
- Rebrandly
- Short.io
Step 3: Create new short links
Use your chosen service to create replacement links for each goo.gl link you found.
Step 4: Update everything
Replace your old goo.gl links with the new ones everywhere they appear.
Step 5: Test your new links
Click each new link to make sure it works properly.
Why This Matters for Your Business
Broken links hurt your business in several ways:
- Lost website traffic: People can’t reach your content
- Damaged SEO: Search engines may penalize sites with broken links
- Poor user experience: Customers get frustrated with 404 errors
- Wasted marketing: Campaigns with broken links fail completely
- Lost sales: Potential customers can’t find your products or services
Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late
You have less than one month to fix this problem. Waiting until August 25th means your links will break before you can replace them.
Many website owners don’t realize how many goo.gl links they have scattered across the internet. Some links might be in old blog posts, forgotten social media campaigns, or printed materials you can’t easily change.
This shutdown shows how risky it can be to depend on free services from big tech companies. Google has shut down many services over the years, often with little warning.
For your business, this means choosing reliable, dedicated link shortening services instead of free tools that might disappear. Look for companies that specialize in link management and have been around for several years.
The goo.gl shutdown affects millions of websites and billions of links worldwide. While Google gave users advance notice, many people still don’t know their links are about to break.
Take action now to protect your online presence. Check all your digital properties for goo.gl links and replace them before it’s too late. Your website visitors, customers, and search engine rankings will thank you for staying ahead of this problem.