We all know some of the well known URL-shortening services such as TinyURL or Twitter’s own Bit.ly.   MakeUseOf has also profiled many others in the past. But one of the drawbacks of using one of those URL-shortening services is that the links you’re firing out by email, blog post or Twitter stream to your friends are rather anonymous. If you have a tiny URL such as http://tinyurl.com/28jenq, the problem is it doesn’t give any indication as to its destination (which is bad if you’re at work with a boss looking over your shoulder and you suddenly click through to a NSFW website).

A better solution, if you have a Google Apps-run domain, is a service called Google Short Apps. This is a Google powered URL-shortening service you can run using your own domain and which you can customise the way you want it.    The advantages include :

• With every short link you send out, the name of your domain is attached to it.   If that link goes viral around the web, so does your web domain name.   Good advertising!


• Most importantly, you can decide what the short URL should be call