Google Partially Reverses Goo.gl Shutdown Plans
Responding to pushback, on August 1, 2025, Google discreetly backtracked on the implementation of the plan to kill every remaining goo.gl short URL on August 25, 2025. Let’s look at the timeline of events and what to expect.
What We Will Cover:
Google’s Goo.gl Backtrack: Background & Impact
Background / Impact
In 2018 Google announced they would deprecated the Google URL Shortener after claiming that 99% of the shortened links were not seeing any traffic. At that time, all existing links would continue to be live but no new shortened links could be created. Then in 2025 Google announced that all goo.gl links would cease working August 25, 2025. Users feared this would lead to broken lnks across sites, emails, campaigns and more. After receiving pushback, Google has now said that links that were found to have no activity since late 2024 and have been displaying a warning message would be deactivated, while links that saw traffic would remain active.
Why It Matters
This change of course will reduce the ‘link rot’ that was looming giving users an additional grace period to do the necessary cleanup to avoid it in the future. Those with a stake in game, marketers, publishers, and developers still need to identify any goo.gl links that show the shutdown warning and migrate them, especially in evergreen content and long-running campaigns. This also serves as a timely reminder about third-party infrastructure and how their decisions can quickly become your problem.
Original Goo.gl Shutdown Timeline
After launching in 2009, Google’s goo.gl, it was less than a decade later, in 2018, that Google initially announced it would deprecate the system. Then, in July 2024, Google said there was a deadline of August, 25, 2025 before the links would stop working and pushed out interstitial warnings that same month. This left possibly billions of links that would have turned into dead-ends, from blog posts, PDF’s and social campaigns.
Which Short Links Will Survive Past August 25, 2025
However, on August 1, 2025 Google announced that only those URL’s that showed no activity since late 2024 and have been displaying the interstitial message “This link will no longer work in the near future” message would be deactivated after August 25, 2025. Any links not reflecting the warning and still receiving traffic would continue to function.
To see which bucket a link is in, Google’s advice is simple: visit it—if you see the warning, it’s on the chopping block; if you don’t, it’s staying.
Action Steps for Marketers and Site Owners
First, audit your links, finding any goo.gl links on your website, in email templates, PDFs, social bios, and QR codes. Once you have a list, go through and test each individually to see if the deactivation warning is shown. You will need to migrate that url to either a modern shortener or a branded short domain under your control. Follow through by updating the link everywhere it appers. This may also be a great opportunity to reduce your use of legacy shorteners at the same time to reduce long-term risk.
Keeping Legacy Links Working
While Google’s change in timeline gives us more time to move any URL’s on the chopping block and a longer lifespan to actively used goo.gl links, it also highlights the risks of not having a long-term strategy around URL’s, third-party shorteners and could be just the push you need to use this transition window to move URL’s and tracking more fully under the control of your organization directly.
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