USA.gov Short URLs

Short URLs have become an essential part of social media communications. They make it easy to share long links with your audience and let you track clicks on your links.

Unfortunately, short URLs can create a poor user experience. A short URL could take a user to a trustworthy site or a spam site, but a user would have no way of knowing before he or she clicks. That's why USA.gov has made it easy for people to create short, trustworthy .gov URLs that only point to official U.S. government information.

Go.USA.gov

Go.USA.gov is a URL shortener that lets anyone with a government e-mail address create short, trustworthy .gov URLs. Go.USA.gov only shortens government URLs—that is: .mil, .gov, .fed.us, .si.edu, and .state.xx.us URLs.

You must have a verifiable U.S. federal, state, or local government e-mail address to register for a Go.USA.gov account. Visit Go.USA.gov to sign up now.

Using Go.USA.gov is easy: Just sign in, copy and paste the government URL and click shorten.

Over 7,000 government employees already use Go.USA.gov and have shortened more than 150,000 URLs.

1.USA.gov

1.USA.gov is the result of a collaboration between USA.gov and bitly.com, the popular URL shortening service. Now, whenever anyone uses bitly to shorten a URL that ends in .gov or .mil, they will receive a short, trustworthy 1.USA.gov URL in return.

To create a 1.USA.gov URL, simply go to bitly.com, paste in a long .gov or .mil URL, and click shorten. There's no need to log in. You can also create 1.USA.gov URLs using any tool that already integrates with bitly, like TweetDeck or Seesmic.

Since anyone can create 1.USA.gov short URLs, there are thousands created and shared every day.

Quick Facts

• The public can click on Go.USA.gov or 1.USA.gov URLs knowing they will lead to official U.S. government information.
• Go.USA.gov and 1.USA.gov track the number of clicks each shortened URL receives, allowing users to measure the impact of their outreach.
• Go.USA.gov is open source and was developed in Drupal. If you would like to contribute to future enhancements, please contact us.

If you have questions about USA.gov short URLs, please e–mail go.usa.gov@gsa.gov.

Content Lead: Michelle Chronister
Page Reviewed/Updated: July 11, 2012