The demand for link shortening services has increased considerably in recent years, as users of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook look to discover ways of sharing links as rapidly and in brief as possible.

Google’s new URL shortening tool transforms long links into the much shorter http://goo.gl/, followed by a unique mixture made up of four letters as well as numbers.

Whilst the popularity of goo.gl remains to be seen, the service could have a constructive effect on search engine optimisation. Social networking and SEO are becoming more and more intertwined, so any service that enables quicker and easier link sharing via social platforms is likely to benefit SEO campaigns.

Goo.gl presently consists of just a text box and a click button marked ‘Shorten’.Google software engineer Muthu Muthusrinivasan stated that the beauty of the service lies in its very simplicity.He also added that Google didnt plan to overload goo.gl with features, but that they wanted  it to be the stablest, most protected, and quickest URL shortner on the web.