URL Shortener
Department of Premier and Cabinet, VictoriaURL shortener for Victorian Government
The Victorian Government has released a URL shortener for vic.gov.au domains.
How to use the service
Shorten URL
Please enter the URL that you'd like to shorten or click here to shorten current:
- Click on the "Shorten It" button.
- Your short URL will be highlighted for you. You can copy the short URL to use it wherever you want.
Restrictions
Currently the service only generates short URLs for .vic.gov.au domains.
Why did we do this?
The increasing popularity of the microblogging site Twitter, with its 140 character limit on messages, has made commercial link-shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl important cogs in the social media community.
Link-shortening applications take existing web addresses and shrink them to fit into short messages that can be read via Twitter or on a smart phone. Since traditional URLs often can be extremely long (and especially in Victorian Government), link-shorteners create short Web addresses that point at the same piece of content.
The US Government recently released go.USA.gov to provide this same service.
There has been demand from across government for a dedicated Victorian Government URL shortening service.
Some government departments ban access to some external URL shortening services.
Victorian Government is currently using a wide variety of external URL shortening services which do not have the authenticity of government attached to them.
Providing a URL shortening service for the Victorian Government will enable the government to be able to keep its data authenticity while ensuring that data reaches a wider audience.
FAQs
Q - Is there a statistics page for my short URL?
A - Not at this point - this is on our list of things to do
Q - How can I see the list of most used or most recent short URLs?
A - Not at this time
Q - I want to shorten an URL but it said that the source domain is not allowed, why is that?
A - We have restricted this to vic.gov.au at this point in time. This is representing Victorian Government.
Q - I like this service and would like to offer it on my website, Is there an API?
A - Yes - coming soon - currently in development - watch this space
Q - My question is not listed here, who should I contact?
A - See contact information below.
Feedback on how we can improve this service
Please email us with your feedback on how we can improve this service.