We can now shorten URLs of up to 2,000 characters in length

When we first launched our site, we were shortening long URLs of up to 500 characters in length.

A few people requested that we extend this figure to allow people to shorten URLs which were longer than 500 characters.

Having not seen a URL longer than 500 characters before, we were absolutely amazed when someone pointed us in the direction of a web site called Right Move. For some reason (we'd love to know why) they use URLs of a really long length, some of them are over a thousand characters long!

An example would be:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/contactBranch.html?propertyId=13355760&backToListURL=%2Fproperty-for-sale%2Ffind.html%3FsearchType%3DSALE%26locationIdentifier%3DREGION%255
E1030%26radius%3D0.0%26displayPropertyType%3D%26minBedrooms%3D%26maxBedrooms%3D%26minPrice%3D140000%26maxPrice%3D150000%26maxDaysSinceAdded%3D%26retirement%3D%26partBuyPartRent%3D%26_includeSSTC%3Don%26sortByPriceDescending%3D%26primaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26secondary&backToPropertyURL=%2Fproperty-for-sale%2Fproperty-13355760.html%3FminPrice%3D140000%26maxPrice%3D150000%26pageNumber%3
D1%26fromSummary%3Dtrue%26backToListURL%3D%252Fproperty-for-sale%252Ffind.html%253FsearchType%253DSALE%2526locationIdentifier%25
3DREGION%25255E1030%2526radius%253D0.0%2526displayPropertyType%253D%25
26minBedrooms%253D%2526maxBedrooms%253D%2526minPrice%253D140000%252
6maxPrice%253D150000%2526maxDaysSinceAdded%253D%2526retirement%253D%25
26partBuyPartRent%253D%2526_includeSSTC%253Don%2526sortByPriceDescending%25
3D%2526primaryDisplayPropertyType%253D%2526secondary

That URL weighs in at a huge 1,035 characters long - try posting that on Twitter!

Again, we're not quite sure why their web site needs URLs that long, but we are here to help, so we did.

We have made some modifications to our code and are pleased to announce that we can now shorten long URLs up to 2,000 characters in length.

Using our service to shorten that really long URL brings it down from 1,035 characters to just 17 characters - a saving of 1,018 characters:

http://fwd4.me/L6

Much better.

If you have any feature requests that you would like to see added to our site, let us know!