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U.S. Government Hops on the URL Shortening Bandwagon

By Hunter Clarke
October 14, 2009
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U.S. Government Hops on the URL Shortening BandwagonToday, the United States Government decided to try its hand at URL shortening. That’s right soon you will be seeing http://go.usa.gov representing any .gov, .mil, and .si.edu URL. Oh, and they can only be sent by people the government approve.

It’s pretty risky business. The government has now spent tax dollars on a service that is not necessarily needed. URL shorteners are dropping right and left, and bit.ly is now becoming somewhat of a default URL shortener. However, I can see the reasoning behind go.usa.gov. The service was built to shorten government sites to one trustworthy URL. This way everyone knows that they will not be attacked by malware ninjas after clicking on it.

To gurauntee this protection, the ability to shorten any  URL’s lies only in the hands of government employee’s. So the next time you see one of these URL’s you can be sure that Uncle Sam is watching out for you.

Be sure to check out some of the top shared government URL’s at their homepage http://go.usa.gov/


  • Wouldnt it be difficult to type in two periods? Wouldnt it be easier to type usa.gov/fda, usa.gov/ftc, usa.gov/dhs, usa.gov/irs, usa.gov/fcc, then you only have to remember that there are only two words usa and gov and they are separated by a period and the only other thing you have to remember is the most commonly used abbreviation of a government service.
  • you're absolutely right...but this is the US government
  • Since the shortener was developed using Drupal contributed modules, it's not like the Gov't paid out thousands to a contractor to build this. They used a borrowed employee and worked with Drupal community members to get it up and running.

    As for why not gov/usda the point of having a shortener is to shorten lots of random gov't links. No one is typing in those links, they are automatically created and assigned a key. That key re-directs from the database to the original link. Perhaps down the road other agencies will look into using the shortener's code and make their own sites capable of shortening links, but until then, this is a pretty good alternative.
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