Create Google Short URLs without the Toolbar

Learn how to use Goo.gl, Google’s new URL shortening service, to shrink web page URLs on the fly without the Toolbar.

Goo.gl is a new URL shortening service from Google but unlike bit.ly or tinyURL, goo.gl cannot be used as a stand-alone service for shrinking URLs of web pages.

That means you can cannot create short URLs on-demand – you either need to install the Google Toolbar or, if you have a blog, you can integrate FeedBurner with Twitterand it will automatically create Google short links for all your new posts (not the old content).

Shorten URLs using goo.gl

There’s however a new extension that you may use to create Goo.gl short URLs for the web page you are currently viewing inside Chrome without requiring the toolbar. Or, if you are using a browser other than Chrome, you can use this online service to shrink the URL of any web page using goo.gl.

Internally, this extension (source) sends a POST request to goo.gl/api with the user-agent parameter set to toolbar@google.com and gets back the Google short URL in JSON. It would be awesome if the developer can convert this extension into abookmarklet.

function shortify(url)
 {
  var auth_token = getUrlShorteningRequestParams(url);
  var urlEscaped = escape(url).replace(/\+/g,"%2B");

  xmlhttp.open("POST", "http://goo.gl/api/url?
     user=toolbar@google.com&url=" + urlEscaped
     + "&auth_token=" + auth_token, false);
  xmlhttp.onload = xmlhttpLoad;
  xmlhttp.send(null);
}