Google plus is gradually becoming one of the important trend for the branders, celebrities and the business professionals, especially with a lot of recent updates made to the G+. Google+ is currently allowing some of the verified users to add “Vanity URL” for your G+ pages.
Google+ is rolling out a new feature that is offering vanity URL for only a certain verified accounts. The offer is about replacing the digits with your desired name (if it is available), in your G+ account url.
Google product manager Saurabh Sharma said in a blog post:
“We’re introducing custom URLs to a limited number of verified profiles and pages. But over time we plan to offer custom URLs to many more brands and individuals”
Why Vanity URL For Google+ pages:
This alteration in the Google+ url will now make it even more easier for people online to trace your profile on G+ or find your pages via search results, as it is the product of Google itself. And this is what the business professionals, branders or the celebrities want, in order to maximize their “spread of word”. Obviously the url with name on it will be easier for people to remember and type in for a search rather than memorizing the long series of digits. For instance it would be easier for other users to find or type in “http://plus.google.com/+name/posts” rather than the long https://plus.google.com/u/0/117870577293242798698/posts/p/pub url. Moreover it is impractical for people to possibly memorize such url’s.
Verified people can now use this short url to share their updates like Britney Spears in G+, just like the way which allows a user to find her on Facebook or Twitter. This will allow people to eliminate the use of third-party utilities to shorten the G+ url. Hence it is also useful to minimize security related issues that might occur while using third-party utilities (see image below).
It is most probably an attempt by Google to first make some verified users comfortable with this feature, eventually depicting the importance of this feature for business or promotion and later on provide this utility to all the G+ users. Already many people (small business professionals) are waiting for an opportunity to create their G+ url before anyone does it with the same name.
In other words, the firm is en-devouring to attract maximum people to get comfortable and use G+ everyday. Moreover most of the professionals are getting more satisfied with the G+ usage than Facebook. It contains fewer and censored ads when compared to Facebook.
Also Google might test new features in addition to the vanity url like “http://plus.google.com/+name/hangouts” or “http://plus.google.com/+name/event”.