Create your own Google Plus vanity URL

The Google Plus vanity URL issue

Google Plus pages for brands and businesses long awaited launch came last week.  Everyone exploded in the doors almost like Walmart on black Friday, creating circles, running in circles, jumping over circles, posting pics, videos, hanging out, and immediately ranting and raving on what they love and what they think is missing.

One of the most talked about on the G+ Pages wish list is vanity URLs.  We have seen a lot of discussion from people angered sometimes saddened and begging for vanity URLs for their Google Plus Pages profiles. Google is believed to eventually grant this wish for vanity URLs but why wait?

The G+ vanity URL solution

We have found away to create your own vanity URL for your G+ page simply by creating a sub-domain or sub-directory that redirects to your G+ profile.

How do I create my own G+ vanity URL

First you need to decide whether you want it to be a sub-domain (plus.ko-websites.com) or a sub-directory (www.ko-websites.com/plus). This decision could possibly already be made for you by your hosting company if you don’t have access to your DNS records or you can’t make a sub-domain on your server.

Setting up a vanity URL for Google Plus as a sub-directory

1. Create a directory in the root of your website called “plus”
2. If you have access to your .htaccess file you can now add a 301 redirect to your .htaccess file for /plus like so
   • redirect 301 /plus https://plus.google.com/u/1/113747161489751866977 (replace number string with the one that goes to your Google Plus Profile or Page)
3. If you do not have access to your .htaccess file you can still do this by creating an index.html in the plus directory that was just created and using a redirect in the header as follows:
   • <meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1; url=https://plus.google.com/107489772510469829439″> (replace number string with the one that goes to your Google Plus Profile or Page)
   • content=’the time to wait before refresh (you can select 0 but some older browsers will not respond to this correctly so a one second delay is recommended,
   • url=’the url to your Google Plus Page or Profile
4. To finish upload the files you have created and give it a run.

Setting up a vanity URL for Google Plus as a sub-domain

1. Create the sub-domain in your DNS records as ‘plus.mysite.com’
   • We want to do this first so it has time to propagate while you are doing the other stuff
2. Next we want to create the sub-domain on the server that matches that of the DNS record you just created.
3. Once this is completed you can continue to follow steps 2-4 above in Setting up a vanity URL for Google Plus as a sub-directory but use the following:
   • .htaccess redirect method
     1. redirect 301 / https://plus.google.com/u/1/113747161489751866977 (replace number string with the one that goes to your Google Plus Profile or Page)
   • index.html meta redirect method
     1. <meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1; url=https://plus.google.com/107489772510469829439″> (replace number string with the one that goes to your Google Plus Profile or Page)