Is goo.gl Still Working in 2026? How to Check and Rescue Your Links

Is goo.gl still working? Mostly, yes — but only because Google partially reversed its own shutdown at the last minute. On August 25, 2025, every goo.gl short link was supposed to die. Instead, only "inactive" links were killed, and actively used links got a reprieve with no end date announced. Here's the full timeline, how to check which side your links landed on, and how to rescue the ones that didn't survive.

The Full goo.gl Timeline

Pulling this together from Google's own announcements, because the sequence matters — the reversal came while the deadline was already in motion:

The moral of the sequence: the reversal arrived weeks before the deadline, after more than a year of warnings. If your workflow depended on goo.gl, you spent that year planning a migration anyway — because "Google changed its mind once" is not a durable infrastructure strategy.

How to Check if Your goo.gl Links Still Resolve

Google's own guidance from the August 2025 update is simple: visit the link. If it redirects you to the destination without any message, it was preserved. If it's dead, you'll get an error page, not a redirect.

1. Open each link in a private/incognito window — logged-in sessions and extensions can mask interstitials.
2. Watch for any interstitial page before the redirect. Flagged links showed a "This link will no longer work in the near future" message — those are now fully dead.
3. A clean redirect means the link survives. Per Google: "If your link redirects you without a message, it will continue to work."
4. Spot-check the highest-value links first — bios, print, video descriptions, email templates: the ones embedded somewhere permanent.

A caution on bulk-checker tools: a plain redirect checker can report HTTP 200 while missing interstitial messages meant for humans, and pasting your whole URL inventory into a random web form hands a third party a complete map of your web properties. For a list that matters, manual spot-checks plus a script you control (a quick curl -I loop) beat a sketchy bulk checker.

How to Rescue Links That Died

If a goo.gl link is already dead, the destination mapping is gone from Google's side. Recovery means rebuilding it yourself:

1. Reconstruct the old → new URL map. Dig through your CMS, email history, or an old analytics export for where each goo.gl link pointed. The Wayback Machine often has goo.gl destinations archived if your own records don't.
2. Recreate each mapping on a shortener you control, so you can fix destinations later without asking anyone's permission. For links you can't update at the source (print, video), a permanent URL on your own domain that redirects onward adds one more editable layer of control.
3. Update embedded references where you can. YouTube descriptions, email templates, bios, and PDFs can all be edited. Start with placements that get real traffic; a dead link in a 2013 forum post can stay dead.
4. Document what you changed. Keep the old → new list — the next platform shutdown is a when, not an if.

What Google Killed Means for Link Ownership

The deeper lesson isn't about Google specifically — it's about what a "free shortener" actually is: someone else's domain, someone else's database, someone else's roadmap. When any of those changes, every link you built on top of it is exposed.

Consider how Google treated its two link services in the same week:

• goo.gl: inactive links killed August 25, 2025; active links preserved after public pushback
• Firebase Dynamic Links (page.link): all links killed August 25, 2025 — custom domains included — with no partial reversal

Same company, same deadline, opposite outcomes — decided by policy, not engineering. No amount of activity saved page.link links. The only protection that worked was owning the domain the links lived on.

We go deep on this pattern — and the graveyard of dead shorteners beyond Google — in the short link permanence guide.

Replacing goo.gl: Free, Unlimited, and Not Going Anywhere

For a goo.gl replacement, the floor requirements are simple: unlimited free links (goo.gl was always free), analytics goo.gl never gave you, and the ability to edit a link's destination so you're never stuck during the next migration.

Sinkto.Link does all three free: unlimited links and custom aliases, click analytics by country and city, device, browser, and referrer, UTM capture on every redirect, editable destinations, link expiration, password-protected links, and QR codes from your short links. Want links on your own domain? Custom domains (up to 3 per team) are live on the Pro plan at $9/month or $79/year — the insurance policy the goo.gl shutdown taught everyone to want.

Migrating is unglamorous: recreate your still-important mappings, update the references you control, keep the list. An afternoon buys back ownership of your links.

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated: August 2026. Timeline verified against Google's own announcements: the developers.googleblog.com shutdown notice (July 18, 2024) including its August 1, 2025 update, the blog.google post "We're updating our plans for goo.gl links," and the Firebase Dynamic Links deprecation FAQ. Current link behavior spot-checked live. Have feedback? Contact us.