Google starts rolling out vanity URLs for Google+, kicks random numbers and letters to the curb

If you’re running a brand or are a celebrity on Google+, you might be getting a vanity URL that looks something like this soon: https://plus.google.com/+davidbeckham.

For a long time we’ve tried to figure out why our profiles were tagged with random numbers and letters on Google+, and this is a step forward and away for that.

Here’s what the team had to say about it:

Today we’re introducing custom URLs to make it even easier for people to find your profile on Google+.

A custom URL is a short, easy to remember web address that links directly to your profile or page on Google+. For instance, +TOYOTA can now use google.com/+toyota to unveil their latest models, +Britney Spears can share her upcoming appearances at google.com/+britneyspears, +Ubisoft can share game trailers and videos at google.com/+assassinscreed, and +Delta can help travellers find great deals at google.com/+delta.

Custom URLs will also be available to people and pages worldwide, so brands like Globo can point readers to google.com/+epoca, or any of their other Brazilian publications.

The company says that these vanity URLs will become available to more people and brands as time goes on, but this is really something that should be available for everyone. It’s not as if this is a sophisticated feature that people aren’t used to on other services, and it’s key to be able to share your presence with others.

The only difficulty that I see stopping a service-wide rollout of this feature is that our Google+ accounts are tied to email addresses, which might not reflect the vanity URL that we’d like. I know mine isn’t what I’d prefer.

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Up until now, people have been using third-party services to grab shorter and shareable URLs, which further confused things for Google+ users.

Oh and feel free to follow me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104612091113514802664/ (See what I mean?)