If you have created a personal google+ profile or  even a business page, you might have noticed the large number as part of the link that uniquely identifies your profile.

Vanity / Custom URL

For example, our Google+ page has the following URL

https://plus.google.com/110885424279358855191

These numbers highlighted as bold above are unique to every page or profile.

But who could remember this url so that they could reach our page. People right from the beginning looking for vanity url’s in google+ that would allow user friendly names. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something like

https://plus.google.com/googleplusnews (This is just an idea, not a working url).

That’s what this change is all about. They have listened to one of the most requested feature and yesterday onwards started to roll out this custom URL’s to some verified personal profiles and business pages.

Here is a profile and page with username that is working since yesterday

https://plus.google.com/+britneyspears (which links to britney spears the singer/musician profile with over 4.1 million+ followers)

http://google.com/+hugoboss (which links to one of the leading fashion and lifestyle brand page with over 1.4 million+ followers)

Note both these profiles are verified profiles.

Saurabh sharma of Google+ has mentioned the following

At first, we’re introducing custom URLs to a limited number of verified profiles and pages. But over time we plan to offer custom URLs to many more brands and individuals, so please stay tuned!

Not very convinced since this is only happening for verified users and there is no easy way for anyone to get their profiled verified. But glad at least we have some confirmation this is coming for everyone. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.