Four Ways To Get A Great Google+ Vanity URL

UPDATE: See our complete post on Social Media Vanity URLS here.

Google+ is in my opinion the best social network out there and it’s certainly the one I use over any other social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

However, Google+ has one distinct limitation that the competition don’t have – the lack of vanity URL’s. For those of you that don’t know, a vanity URL is a human readable version of a web address. For example, the RefuGeeks Facebook address is facebook.com/refugeeks but our Google+ URL is plus.google.com/108794563089450599353. Not quite as simple to remember is it? So you see, a Google+ vanity URL comes in really useful when trying to share links with people who may want to visit your social network pages.

Google have added vanity URL’s to their services but unfortunately these are by invitation only and specially reserved to famous people or those with lots of followers. So what if us mere mortals want a Google+ vanity URL? Well, here are four ways you can get your very own Google+ vanity URL…

GPlus.to

Gplus.to is the de-facto place to go if you want a Google+ vanity URL. However, with it being the original, it also means that the majority of address have already been registered.

Nevertheless, it’s a great service and if you need to add a number one to the end of your username is it really such a big deal? All you need to do to register for a Google+ vanity URL with Gplus.to is enter the long numeric string from your Google+ profile address and choose a username. There is no sign up and you don’t have to give any personal details.

Once registered your new Google+ vanity URL will look something like this – gplus.to/refugeeks. Much better than the default address don’t you think?

Plus.ly

Plus.ly is pretty much the same as Gplus.to (apart from the name of course), you sign up in exactly the same way and your Google+ vanity URL would then be http://plus.ly/username.

GPlusID

GPlusID has the best domain name in my opinion as it’s not cryptic like the others. You guessed it, just like before all you need is a username and your profile string then you will have a Google+ vanity address that looks something like http://gplusid.com/username.

So now you might be thinking “why has he shown me three services that are exactly the same?“. Well the answer is simple, if your chosen username is taken then you might want to try the others so that you can get the perfect Goolge+ vanity URL. However, we’ve really saved the best until last here…

Create a Sub-Domain

This is the trickiest of all the options on offer in this article, but it will give you the best Google+ vanity URL possible. If you own your own domain like refugeeks.com  you can create a sub-domain within your hosting providers control panel and have that sub-domain forward on to your Google+ profile.

This process is different depending on who your hosting provider is, so if you’re not sure how to do this then I would suggest your speak to the tech support department for your domain host, or you could post a question in our forums.

The beauty of this process is that the whole of your Google+ vanity URL will be themed to your domain. So now my Google+ vanity URL’s were gplus.refugeeks.com for RefuGeekst. Personally, I think that these vanity URL’s are the best way to go if you already have a domain setup.

You can also take this one step further and have matching vanity addresses for all of your social network accounts. For example gplus.refugeeks.com, fb.refugeeks.com & twitter.refugeeks.com. Pretty cool hey!

Have we missed something? Is there a Google+ vanity URL service that’s better than what we have listed above? Why not pipe up and tell us in the comments section below…