Go.USA.gov – Create short, trustworthy .gov URLs

As of last Friday, whenever anyones uses bit.ly or any service that uses bit.ly’s API to shorten a .gov or .mil URL, they will receive a short 1.USA.gov URL in return.   USA.gov and Bit.ly collaborated to provide this service to create a better user experience for people who interact with the government online. Now it will be even easier for people to know when a short URL will direct them to a trustworthy official U.S. government site. Many other organizations have similar arrangements with bit.ly, including C-SPAN, NPR, Facebook, and The Economist.   We will still maintain Go.USA.gov as an option for government employees to use as a URL shortener, and Go.USA.gov URLs will continue to work. We will continue to maintain and enhance Go.USA.gov in the future.   Like Go.USA.gov, bit.ly’s tracking system gives us real-time insight into what government content people are sharing online. We are working to make click data from 1.USA.gov URLs available through Data.gov. Here's a list of the most popular popular 1.USA.gov URLs from the past week:

1. 4,592 clicks — NASA - Dallas Family's Tradition Boosts NASA for 100 Flights
2. 3,593 clicks — NASA - 'Elephant Trunks' in Space
3. 3,531 clicks — NASA - Multimedia - Video Gallery
4. 3,239 clicks — Air Force officials identify Frankfurt Airport shooting deaths
5. 3,160 clicks — Human Space Flight (HSF) - Realtime Data
6. 2,901 clicks — Magnitude 6.6 - SOLOMON ISLANDS
7. 1,979 clicks — NASA - Captured From the Ground
8. 1,915 clicks — Air Force Week in Photos
9. 1,720 clicks — PDF of presentation by Rep Paul Ryan
10. 1,702 clicks — NASA - Anchored

We'll be sharing information on popular links more regularly on the USA.gov blog. We hope you find them interesting and useful.   Please feel free to contact us if you have any other questions about any of our USA.gov short URLs.

We created Go.USA.gov because short URLs are necessary for Twitter and other online services, and we wanted to help people know when short URLs lead to official government sites. We've recently seen some of our users print Go.USA.gov URLs in government publications like brochures and posters. Short URLs can work on the printed page, but we want to point out a few issues that can create a poor user experience when using Go.USA.gov URLs in print.

Typos

When a person sees a Go.USA.gov URL in print, the person must then type the short URL into his or her browser exactly as it appears. This is easier said than done when you consider that Go.USA.gov URLs are case sensitive and contain homoglyphs. Homoglyphs are letters and numbers that look similar to each other. Examples include 0 and O (the digit zero and capital letter O), and 1 and l (the digit one and lowercase letter L). Some users leave off the characters after the hash completely and enter "go.usa.gov."

Can you tell the difference between http://go.usa.gov/l0t and http://go.usa.gov/1Ot? Each URL goes to a very different destination.

Misdirection

When a user does not type the short URL exactly as it appears, he or she may be sent to the wrong destination or to an error page on Go.USA.gov. Many users who end up on Go.USA.gov become frustrated or confused and then contact us for help. Some people even try to register for an account to access the information.

Whenever possible, we help these people find the information they're looking for, but there are ways to prevent them from getting lost in the first place.

A solution

If you want to use URLs in print, consider creating vanity URLs using readable words on your own domain, such as youragency.gov/brochure or youragency.gov/program-name. Using a URL that is easy-to-read, easy-to-remember, and easy-to-type will help your audience find their way from print to the Internet much more easily. Also, if you use your own domain, users are more likely to end up closer to the intended destination if they make a typo.

Using short URLs in print is important because no one wants to read and type a long URL from a brochure. But Go.USA.gov URLs may not the best solution when going to press. Please consider your audience and circumstances carefully before printing a short Go.USA.gov URL.

The Go.USA.gov team held an unconference session at last week’s Government Web and New Media Conference. Thanks to everyone who attended and for all of your great suggestions. Here’s a list of the ideas we heard:

Suggestions for improvement

• Create API for creating shortened URLs
• Enable unregistered users to create shortened URLs
• Provide more flexibility for metrics
• Create an API to access metrics so that social media dashboards can be created
• Create a macro or program that will auto-shorten URLs in e-mail clients
• Shorten the length of the URL (usa.gov/xyz instead of go.usa.gov/xyz)
• Add a reverse lookup function to the site (and API) so that users can preview the full URL from a shortened URL
• Allow people to shorten REALLY long URLs

Other ideas

• Create a single government tweet-scheduling application/service
• Start a discussion thread for Go.USA.gov on forum.webcontent.gov
• Use Twitter for service updates and announcements

We’re happy to announce that we’ve moved forward with the Twitter account. You can now follow us on Twitter at @GoUSAgov.

Did we capture all of your ideas? If not, please contact us or leave a comment below.

Also, if you weren't at the conference you can find a copy of the Go.USA.gov one-sheet that we handed out on the new 2010 Web & New Media Conference Resources page.

We get a lot of requests for vanity URLs on Go.USA.gov. For instance, someone may want to shorten a URL to information about wildfire preparedness and give it a custom name like Go.USA.gov/wildfires. This is a feature of other URL shorteners like bit.ly and TinyURL, but we’re still not sure if we want to implement this on Go.USA.gov. Here’s why:

Go.USA.gov URLs are permanent, by design. They do not change, and we do not presently allow users to edit the destination of a Go.USA.gov URL. We don’t want someone to create a URL like Go.USA.gov/wildfires and have it permanently point to a URL that may go out of date or be taken down.

We also want to prevent a landgrab for the most valuable vanity URLs. We can only imagine what would happen if someone created Go.USA.gov/healthcare or Go.USA.gov/immigration.

That said, Go.USA.gov is still in beta and we’re thrilled by all of the suggestions that our users have offered us. We want to make an excellent product and we’re happy for all the help we can get. If you want to help, please contact us and please keep making suggestions!

This week Go.USA.gov reached two exciting milestones:

1. We now have over 1,000 registered users on Go.USA.gov.
2. Go.USA.gov URLs have been clicked over one million times.

We are extremely excited about this growth because it’s helping us get closer to our goal of providing real-time data about what’s popular across government. Because Go.USA.gov is being used by 1,000 people working in different agencies across all levels of government, we’re tracking clicks on links about an astounding variety of information.

Coincidentally, Facebook just released a widget called the Recommendations plugin that allows us to see which Go.USA.gov URLs are most popular on Facebook at any given time. Check it out:

Here’s how the Recommendations plugin works, according to Facebook:

The Recommendations plugin shows personalized recommendations to your users. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the plugin can display personalized recommendations whether or not the user has logged into your site. To generate the recommendations, the plugin considers all the social interactions with URLs from your site. For a logged in Facebook user, the plugin will give preference to and highlight objects her friends have interacted with.

This is a great way for us to combine the breadth of information shared through Go.USA.gov with the social insights of Facebook. Being able to create mashups like this was one of the major motivators behind building Go.USA.gov and we’re looking forward to making more in the future.

We also received a few blog mentions this week. Thanks to Nancy Scola for mentioning Go.USA.gov twice on TechPresident:

• April 21, 2010. One Million Clicks for U.S.’s Official Link Shortener
• April 22, 2010. The ‘One America’ Angle to Gov Link Shrinking

If you have ideas on how we can improve Go.USA.gov, please contact us. We’d love to hear from you.

You may have noticed that Go.USA.gov has been going down for short periods of time lately. While the service has only been offline for 5 to 10 minutes at a time, this is unacceptable to us and we know it's been a frustration to many of our users.

We've spent the past few weeks scouring our server logs to figure out the cause of the outages and finally found our answer this week: exporting user data as a CSV file. When a user with a large number of URLs clicks the "Export to CSV" link, it places a ton of unnecessary strain on the database.

We're working on a solution to this problem, but need to temporarily remove the CSV export option in the meantime. We apologize for this inconvenience, but our stance is that reliability of the overall service is more important than CSV export functionality. Go.USA.gov will still track clicks on your links, and you can still review your click data by looking through your URL history.

As always, please contact us if you have comments, suggestions, or questions.

In case you missed our first announcement in September, Go.USA.gov is a URL shortener created by USA.gov in coordination with the Drupal community. It only shortens government URLs – that is: .mil, .gov, .fed.us, and .si.edu URLs. People can click on Go.USA.gov URLs and know that they will be taken to an official source of government information.

Go.USA.gov also provides data for shortened URLs, including the number of clicks and referrers for each URL. This allows users to measure the impact of their outreach.

We've been stress testing Go.USA.gov for the past six months and are thrilled to announce that anyone with a .mil, .gov, .fed.us, or .si.edu email address can now create a Go.USA.gov account and begin shortening URLs right away. If you are a government employee, but are unable to register, please contact us.

Register your account now!

Why we created Go.USA.gov

Go.USA.gov is designed to create a better user experience for people who interact with the government online. The service allows agencies to present users with trustworthy short .gov URLs on Twitter and other online services with character restrictions.

Another benefit of Go.USA.gov is that it tracks clicks to gather real-time data about what's popular across government. This data will become more valuable as more agencies use Go.USA.gov and it will allow us to better gauge citizens' interests and needs. You can see the most popular 25 shortened URLs on our homepage right now.

Who is using Go.USA.gov?

Over 700 public servants across all levels of government have registered to use Go.USA.gov. So far, Go.USA.gov users have shortened over 3,000 URLs that have been clicked over 450,000 times.

Why not Go.gov?

Go.USA.gov was created to serve citizens and they are the ultimate end users. We believe that including USA.gov in the shortened URLs makes them more intuitive and meaningful to the public. Many Internet users may not realize that .gov is the exclusive top-level domain of the US government and USA.gov adds context.

What's to come

We're tracking usage of Go.USA.gov very closely right now and plan to add more features and functionality as we get feedback from users. If you find anything about Go.USA.gov that you'd like to fix or improve, please let us know.

How you can improve Go.USA.gov

If you're a developer, you should be happy to know that Go.USA.gov is open source. Please contact us if you'd like us to notify you when we're ready to collaborate with developers. Go.USA.gov was built using Drupal.

If you have more questions about Go.USA.gov, please check out our FAQs or contact us.

We created Go.USA.gov to let government employees create short, trustworthy URLs for use on Twitter and other online services with character restrictions. It is extremely important to us that individuals who click on these short URLs know that they will always be led to trustworthy government information. To accomplish this, we employ two security restrictions:

• Go.USA.gov registration is limited to people with email addresses in U.S. government top level domains: .mil, .gov, .fed.us, and .si.edu email addresses.
• Only URLs in U.S. government top level domains can be shortened with Go.USA.gov

We've received a few questions about these policies and want to explain the rationale behind them.

Why we restrict user registration

To date, we've only allowed people with certain government email addresses to register for a Go.USA.gov account because these email addresses act as qualifiers. Public servants are required to undergo a variety of vetting processes before they're given a government email address. This gives us some assurance that they will use Go.USA.gov appropriately.

We recognize that this excludes a large segment of public servants at different levels of government who don't have access to .mil, .gov, .fed.us, or .si.edu email addresses. We're currently working on ways to open Go.USA.gov to all levels of government.

If you are a government employee who would like to use Go.USA.gov, but are unable to register, please write us and let us know.

Why we restrict URLs

Restricting the kinds of URLs that Go.USA.gov shortens is currently the best option we have to ensure that every single Go.USA.gov URL will lead to official government information. We understand it's frustrating that useful government information hosted on other domains cannot be shortened. But it also effectively prevents the creation of Go.USA.gov URLs that redirect to malicious or inappropriate domains.

While we restrict user registration on Go.USA.gov, we cannot ensure that every single user will use it appropriately or effectively guard their login information. Restricting URLs assures a level of consistency and security across all Go.USA.gov URLs, even in the off chance that an individual user's account is compromised.

It's worth repeating: our concern about user experience was a major motivator in the creation of Go.USA.gov. Most short URLs do not provide clues about their destination. We apply restrictions to Go.USA.gov URLs in order to make them more meaningful. This is what distinguishs us from other freely available URL shortening services. This does not mean, however, that we are not working to modify some of these restrictions in the future.

We're grateful for the feedback we've received on Go.USA.gov and are constantly working to improve the service. Please contact us at any time to tell us how you'd improve Go.USA.gov.

NOTICE: This bug has been fixed.

We're currently experiencing problems when shortening new long URLs. When you enter a long URL, it returns an incorrect shortened URL in the "Shortened URL" field. The correct shortened URL is, however, available in the list of "Your Recent Links."

For example, I just shortened a URL from the Department of State and it returned http://go.usa.gov/l2M, which will not work. However, the URL under my recent links is http://go.usa.gov/l2e, which does work.

Until we get this bug fixed, you can still use Go.USA.gov, but be sure to use the short URL listed under "Your Recent Links." We apologize for this problem and we're working to fix it as quickly as possible.

We'd like to thank everyone who brought this to our attention. Watch this space for updates on this issue.

We've tested and tested, and we think that Go.USA.gov is stable and reliable.  Now that you've joined us, we want you to tell us about any bugs or problems you encounter while you're testing.   We know you already have ideas about how we can improve our .gov URL shortening service - so give us those too.  Leave a comment below...