smfreegard
goo.gl blocked bad links - why not react to that?
Hi there
I just tried out your plugin by creating my own goo.gl link and creating an email containing it. When I tested it, nothing happened - but debugging showed
DecodeShortURLs: URL is not redirect: .... = 200 OK
So then I went to the goo.gl link in my web browser. Somehow I'd managed to annoy Google because they had "blacklisted" the test redirector I had made. It had returned "HTTP 200" but the page said
this goo.gl shortlink has been disabled. It was found to be violating our Terms of Service
So even though it broke my test - I don't mind - I certainly was messing with Google a tad there. But I did think maybe your code could detect that violation text and add +5 to the score or something? If the redirector itself doesn't like the link - it must be bad (although my test wasn't - let's ignore that part ;-)
Just an idea
Jason
Your browser will HTTP GET the URL, did you test an HTTP HEAD and see what you get? (no pun intended) It may well be 200 OK too,but good to check.
All doesn't matter anymore - Google is shutting down that service
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/30/google-shutting-down-goo-gl-url-shortening-service/
