Google Profiles – How to Get a Google Profiles Name?

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I already have a Google+ profile with this ugly long URL:

https://plus.google.com/106542087505398120198/

I recently discovered in this LifeHacker article that the author has a much shorter Google Profiles name (here: http://www.google.com/profiles/ginatrapani).

I tried if I already had such a profile by using my Google nickname and the first part of my Gmail address as suffix but this didn't work.

I checked all my Account settings but I can't find out where to apply or change for such a name. If I go to http://www.google.com/profiles it leads me straight to my Google+ account.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Best Answer

It looks like under an older Google Profiles system (such as Buzz) it was possible to have a pretty URL like you've found above. Google axed it as a default however, in part because it effectively exposed users' username / email addresses.

The best article I could find on the topic was this blog post, which mentions:

if you had selected a vanity URL for your old Google Profile those have been grandfathered in to point to your current Google+ profile.

They may be coming at some stage, in terms of anything from Google itself is this line in the product forum in March:

The team has actually decided to take another look at vanity URLs based on user feedback and will be talking about whether or how to proceed - rest assured that they have not been ruled out. Stay tuned for updates.

In the mean time there are a bunch of URL shortening services operating you could use, or if you have your own domain you can point that to your profile.

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