USA.gov Short URLs

Short URLs have become an essential part of social media communications. Short URLs 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 url shortened with a commercial service 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 short 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, and .si.edu 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, paste in a long .mil, .gov, .fed.us, or .si.edu URL, and click shorten.

1.USA.gov

1.USA.gov is the result of a collaboration between USA.gov and bit.ly, the popular URL shortening service. Now, whenever anyone uses bit.ly to shorten a URL that ends in .gov or .mil, he/she 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.

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 by USA.gov and the Department of Veterans Affairs. If you would like to contribute to future enhancements, or if you have questions about USA.gov short URLs, please contact us.

Content Lead: Michelle Chronister
Page Reviewed/Updated: September 27, 2011