Jerimiah Yap

For well-known businesses, brands and companies, it's important to have an easy-to-remember URL for clients to find them online. Recently Google+ has granted vanity URL's for popular brands such as Hugo Boss (google.com/+hugoboss) and Toyota (google.com/+toyota) and popular celebrities such as David Beckham (google.com/+davidbeckham) and Hugh Jackman (google.com/+hughjackman), which makes it easier for consumers and fans to get updates on them.

Before Google+ granted this feature popular brands and celebrities had Google+ URLs such as https://plus.google.com/850435320483204023859499 for example. It was difficult for people to remember long, random number URLs.

"We've started rolling out custom URLs to a limited set of verified profiles and pages on Google+. (In fact, now you can find us at google.com/+googleplus). While we're not quite ready for everyone to start claiming their own custom URLs, we plan to expand the availability over time, so stay tuned!" Google+ wrote on its post on August 13.

Users have requested for custom URLs since Google+'s debut. Rival social networking website Facebook allowed vanity URLs three years ago for all users.

Google+ added on its post that "custom URLs will also be available to people and pages worldwide, so brands like Globo can point readers to google.com/+epoca, or any of their other Brazilian publications. 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..."

Google+ also wants people to connect with each other through mutual interest with the use of custom URLs. The company wants "to make it even easier for people to find your profile on Google+."

Vanity URLs aren't available to all users yet. Google hasn't scheduled a definite date on which this will be available.