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How to Get a Custom URL / Username for your Google Plus Profile

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Google Plus is the new social network by Google established since 2011. It is reported that Google+ now has a total of 300 million active users every month.

If you have been active on Google+ now, you possibly notice that the URL of your profile looks quite ugly, for example, here is my profile URL:

https://plus.google.com/113914713777855840452/

Google+ is now using a long ID at the end of URL which is difficult for people to remember. Here are some solutions to set username to shorten your Google+ URL so that it would be cleaner and more recognizable.

1. Google+ officially offers custom URLs

Update: Google is offering vanity URLs for verified accounts and normal accounts. You just need to type in short URLs like “google.com/+techwalls” or “plus.google.com/+tuando” to reach those pages.

Google Plus launches vanity URLs for verified accounts.
Google Plus launches vanity URLs for verified accounts.

The feature is not available widely for normal users yet. Google announced that they are introducing custom URLs to a limited number of verified profiles and pages. Google has rolled out the feature and it is available to most users. You will just need to have a profile photo, at least 10 followers and an account that is at least 1 month old. Then Google will send you an email to confirm that you’ve got a custom URL for your Google Plus profile. You will also see a notification when you log in to your account. After clicking on the button “Get URL”, you will see the following screen:

get-custom-url-google-plus

In most cases, you will have to accept the URL they offer, however, some established accounts will have to option to request a different one.

Notice that you won’t be able to change your username once you set it. You only can change its format by going to Profile -> About -> Links and choose Edit, then you will see the option like below.

google-plus-change-url

Recently, Google has announced the a search-specific feature called Google+ Direct Connect. The feature gives visibility for Google Plus pages as the pages will show up when people type query in Google+ Search, for example, when people type in “+TechWalls”, they will see the icon and link to the Google+ page of the brand. To make your page eligible for this feature, you just need to install the Google+ badge on your website, read this post on custom URLs for Google+ Page for more details.

Google will determine your page’s relevancy and popularity based on its algorithms, you will be able to get a custom URL if your page qualifies. We can understand that Google encourages us to be more active on Google Plus by engaging people, updating posts regularly and driving people to add your page to their circles. You absolutely get a better chance when your page becomes more popular.

2. Google Profiles

Google Profiles is now redirecting your profile page to Google+ Profile if you have one. So you can create a profile URL like this:

https://profiles.google.com/TuanDoViet

However, you can set the username of your own because Google Profiles uses your Google username for this URL. This is also a drawback of this solution, you might have to create a new Google account to get your desired Profile URL.

You just need to go to this page to create your profile, then click on the option Edit your profile – Profile URL. Google will give you 2 choices of Profile URL, you can choose the one with your username and save these settings.

google-profile-url

Update: Google don’t allow access to this page anymore, but you still can get a vanity URL using your own Google ID. So, your URL will be https://profiles.google.com/your_username.

3. Gplus.to

Gplus.to is a service that shortens your Google Plus profile into a neat, easy to remember link. To create your shortened URL, all you have to do is giving Gplus your Google+ profile ID, it will generate an URL in the format gplus.to/yourusername. You can set whatever name you want as long as it is still available. Here is my custom URL:

http://gplus.to/tuandoviet

gplus-profile

However, notice that this service is not related to Google, so you are not guaranteed to own the ID and this is also not a 301 permanent redirect.

Do you use the solutions above or any other ways to set your own URL?

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mike Kilmer says

    Used the gplus.to method. Took about 1 minute. You could set your own redirect, but the gplus.to one will probably keep track of any changes to the url format within google (not that they wouldn’t).

    Any recommendations on best way to track the vanity url availability within google?

    Mike

    • Tuan Do says

      There is no way to track the availability. I will update this post immediately after they make it official for public. :)

      • Mike Kilmer says

        Great, man. Will I get an email notifying me of the post update? I don’t see a feature to follow this particular post. Thanks. : )

      • Tuan Do says

        Hi Mike,
        Google has launched the Google+ Direct Connect that allows some pages to have custom URLs. I’ve updated this post, check it out.

      • Tuan Do says

        Hi Mike,
        After you link your website to the Google+ Page, just wait for Google to consider your site. It uses an algorithm, so we don’t know when we will receive the confirmation email. Google just said that we need to have a meaningful of followers on Google Plus.
        The feature is limited now.

  3. Akash says

    The following option is no more available:

    “Google will give you 2 choices of Profile URL, you can choose the one with your username and save these settings.”

    Google is no more supporting custom URL/username. It will show the numbers only.

  4. Robin Carlisle says

    It’s just cold and clammy. Everything about Google… whatever they dream up… or screw… always… just cold and clammy.

    Don’t they ever do usability studies? Incorporate user feedback? I’m sure they do… but who the heckledoodles would ever think that a loooooooooong string of numbers would be okay with anyone. Vanity URL’s. Ridiculous. We just want to use our dang names… or something WE dream up, not them. Come on Big G! Quit with the cold and clammy stuff!

    • Tuan Do says

      Hi Robin,
      Google said that probably they will charge a fee for the custom URL. Some pages have custom URLs already. At least it is free now.

  6. Ian M says

    I am struggling with the custom URL and having read through this thread it is clear that Google has changed their approach since this thread started. What would be really useful is to see the dates of people’s comments to know how recent the information is. Can you do this Tuan? (Nov 28 2012)

    • Tuan Do says

      Yes Ian.
      I will work on that tomorrow. I thought it is not really necessary because I update this post very often.
      I’ve just added the date of the last update above, it was just a few days ago.

  7. Tariq Rahim says

    Hey Tuan,

    Thanks for some great advice…really helpful!

    Just a quick question, is it possible to change the “nickname” assigned to one’s G+ account once a nickname has already been assigned? If yes, can you please provide some details as to how I can go about doing this?

    Thanks again!

    • Tuan Do says

      Hi Tariq,
      I don’t think we can change the nickname at the moment. I hope we can when the feature is officially launched.

  8. Mike says

    I got an email from google that they offered me a custom URL and they also suggested a name to choose :)

  9. Adam Ever says

    thanks for sharing the way to set custom username, I’m going to use gplus.to

  10. Chetan Morajkar says

    Hello,

    Even i too try for shorten URL, but not happen. Please help.

    Thanks

  12. Hoan says

    Hi Tuan Do
    How long does it take to google display the author in search results?

    • Tuan Do says

      Hi Hoan,
      It will be in effect immediately when Google bot crawl your page. Just set it up correctly.

  13. Jack Freezer says

    Is there a possibility to have your google plus account accessible on your domain? Something like jackfreezer.com would display the content of my google plus page. Please note that I don’t want to redirect the user to a google plus page. In other words, the url should remain jackfreezer.com.

    • Tuan Do says

      Hi Jack,
      I don’t think it is possible at the moment except you put an iframe on your site.

  15. adil says

    my google plus account is not showing while i have a account of google plus

  16. Peter Mantu says

    What is status of the above? Any new developments as far as the topic is concerned?

  18. seocheap says

    I was able to create a custom url for our business google+ page. We emailed support and they able to offer this to our company. Not sure if you can do this for a personal account. But if a business and you have verified your business this was an option for us.

  19. Mandy Lake says

    Thanks for posting this! I will be so glad when this option is finally available. I cannot stand all those numbers and I want people to be able to remember my google+ profile, especially since the rest of my social media accounts have custom urls.
    Mandy :)

  21. Michael St Louis says

    I tested this out on one of my profiles with nothing on it. I deleted my Google+ and went to the link you listed, but cant’ find an option to set the URL anywhere. In fact my profile looks exactly the same as it did in Google+ I thought it gave it back to me automatically, until I saw that Google+ was a suggested service. I’ll try to figure it out I guess, thanks for the article.

  24. buythiscomputer says

    Who said that it is possible to set a custom URL like FACEBOOK/USERNAME ?

    This is BS, it is still not possible !

  27. Digital Marketing Company says

    It is good to use URL shortening services so as to easily remember the URL

    • Tuan Do says

      Congrats, dude.
      It seems like Google is rolling out the custom URLs more widely. I have another page with just 12 likes and we got it as well.
      I’m looking forward to more responses to confirm this. :)

  30. Sandeep says

    Yesterday day night, google give me the chance to get custom url. Thax GooglePlus. :DD

  31. Yesi Livera says

    Yeah, I got it too. Looks like google gives more chances to people to have custom URL

  32. Justin Germino says

    I have a custom Google Plus personal URL, but Google never sent me one for my Business Page as an option even though I have it linked and checkmark verified to my site.

    • Tuan Do says

      Congrats, Justin.
      I got the custom URLs on all my pages. I even didn’t link those sites to Google Plus and they still offered me the URLs. The feature is rolling out and it could take a while to take effect on all accounts.

  34. dirk says

    if i knew they would have put the Nickname behind my normal name I would never entered my nickname….

    i just want my normal name, without the nickname behind it…

    i deleted my nickname from my profile, but it still offers to change it into +nameNickname

    brrrrrrrr

    • Tuan Do says

      Yes, Google offers the custom URLs purely based on the name you set. It won’t change even when you change name of your profile, or you will have to wait. That’s why I said this should be considered short URL instead of custom URL. We don’t have a choice.

      • xobbit says

        Dear Tuan and other readers: can you please advise me on how long do I have to wait to get short URL updated to what is written in my “name” on G+? I got a few friends and little content, so don’t want to delete account and with 10+ years of Gmail acc I feel they couldv’e offered some choice.
        BESIDES they offer short URL in Unicode(non-Latin), I don’t want to have my URL available to only part of the world ;-)

  35. Ahmer Jamil Khan says

    A day after my 19th Birthday, I got an email from Google stating that I got my own url!
    google.com/+AhmerJamilKhan
    Now that comes as a surprise!
    Oh, btw I do own a domain: AhmerJamilKhan.org

  36. Tariqur Rahman says

    Today I set my own google plus username.Very thanks google for this feature

  38. Scott Warren says

    Thanks for the great information. I just built my company page for My Dad Reads to Me and couldn’t figure out how to make the link look presentable. I was able to use gplus.to to get it set up and customizable, while I work on followers.