A few weeks ago, Google made its URL shortener, Goo.gl, open for everyone and gave it its own website, similar to Bit.ly’s. Previously, Goo.gl could only be used by Google’s own services.

When they announced this, Google made a pretty bold statement: “… we do want it to be the stablest, most secure, and fastest URL shortener on the web.”

That’s something that we should test, isn’t it?

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With the rise of microblogging, URL shortening services have become extremely popular. And no wonder; just imagine sharing links on Twitter without one. Although some of these services have considerably more market share than others (we’re looking at you, Bit.ly and TinyURL), there are plenty of options out there.

One thing that has surprised us a bit here at Pingdom is that we haven’t seen any real numbers on how reliable and how fast these different URL shorteners are compared to each other. After all, adding a layer on top of the target URL (the direct link) means slower access and also adds a single point of failure, so these things should matter. So, we decided to test them.

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