Thanks to Net at Night we came across a great little app for shortening Google search query URLs. Gog.is, developed by Norwegian Mr. Calzone, offers the simplest method to create and send a short URL via e-mail and IM. No downloads, no site to visit, no ambiguous URLs, simply type in http://gog.is/ followed by your query and the link will automatically redirect to the corresponding Google search result page.
If you’ve ever needed to e-mail or IM a link to a Google search results page you’ll know that there are various problems that can arise; links can break in IM and e-mail and some of the shortening services mask the ultimate link location.
We’ve written about our favorite link shortening services before, and Gog.is works in much the same way as most of them; the exception being it only shortens Google search queries.
How Gog.is works
Type in http://gog.is/ and add any search query. That’s it!
For instance, the Google search results for the query ReadWriteWeb would have the long URL:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ReadWriteWeb&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
Using Gog.is would deliver the same results page, yet would come from the URL:
http://gog.is/ReadWriteWeb
Gog.is seems to also work with a variety of Google operators such as site:, link:, info:, etc. If you need a refresher on operators, take a look at Google Guide’s Google Cheat Sheet.
Gog.is was made in part as a joke for a friend that Mr. Calzone was constantly “slapping” with Google searches, but we think it’s an efficient and useful resource.
What do you think?
