Google Killed goo.gl — What Now?

In August 2025, Google officially shut down goo.gl, its link shortening service. Links that had been shared billions of times across the internet — in emails, documents, social posts, and printed materials — stopped working overnight. If you're reading this, there's a good chance some of your links were affected.

What happened

Google launched goo.gl in 2009 and deprecated it in 2018, stopping new link creation. But existing links continued to redirect — until they didn't. Google's shutdown means any goo.gl link now returns a 404 error. No redirect, no warning, just a dead end.

Who's affected

Anyone who used goo.gl links in permanent or semi-permanent content is impacted. That includes links in published blog posts and articles, email newsletters and drip campaigns, printed marketing materials (brochures, business cards, flyers), academic papers and documentation, social media posts, and QR codes printed on physical products.

The most painful part? Many of these links can't be updated. You can't edit a printed flyer. You can't retroactively change a link in an email someone received three years ago.

How to migrate your links

If you have a list of goo.gl links (or can export them from your Google account), here's the migration path:

Step 1: Export your links. If you used goo.gl while signed into Google, you may be able to access your link history through Google Takeout before it's removed entirely.

Step 2: Map destinations. For each goo.gl link, identify the original destination URL. If you still have access to the original content, note the full URL.

Step 3: Create replacements on Clypt. Use Clypt's bulk import to recreate all your links at once. You can even use custom short codes to match your old naming conventions.

Step 4: Update what you can. Go through your live content — websites, active social posts, email templates — and replace goo.gl links with your new Clypt links.

Why Clypt won't do this to you

We built Clypt with permanence in mind. Your links are yours. We don't sunset features without years of notice, and we offer data export so you always own your redirect data. If you're on a paid plan, your links redirect as long as your account is active. Free-tier links are retained for 12 months of inactivity before any cleanup.

The goo.gl shutdown is a reminder: don't build on platforms that treat links as disposable. Your links are infrastructure — treat them accordingly.