Decode Short URL By Right Click Using TheRealURL

By Shivam Vaid On June 23, 2010 Leave a Comment 147 views

URL Shortening has become a necessity with the advent of social media like twitter. Most of the times, you end up dealing with short URLs which link you to the required actual address. However, at times you might like to know the actual link behind the short URL before deciding to click it. The reasons could include suspicion of malicious link, spam and so on.

One service which enables to achieve this with just a matter of click is TheRealURL. Essentially it can be used as an extension with firefox/chrome ( in addition to the web interface where you can enter the short URL and decode it ) which then just enables to do a right click on the short URL and get the actual link behind the same.

We will cover the firefox example here. All you need to do is go to the firefox add-on page for TheRealURL and add the extension to firefox.

You would be required to restart firefox after installation of the add-on. Once the add-on is installed, it becomes extremely simple to un-shorten the long URLs

As an example, SnackTools mentioned one of the posts on Inficone on Bannersnack on it’s twitter page. The middle( 2nd ) post mentioning BannerSnack is the one being referred to.

So all you now need to do is go on the short URL hyperlink and do a right click.

You will see an option <Get TheRealURL> – just click it and in the bottom bar of the browser – you see the decoded URL. Refer the snapshot below.

If you have a short URL like http://www.xyz.ly , you can also use the TheRealURL web service by entering the following address in URL bar of your browser <http://therealurl.appspot.com/?url=http://www.xyz.ly>. This will just display the decoded address.

Refer to this page for a list of supported short URL services by TheRealURL. Overall TheRealURL is an excellent tool to decode long URLs and when integrated with your browser is really a breeze to use.

Do try this and share your thoughts in the comments section. If you like the post, you can share it with your friends using the links given below. Also do submit to us any tools/web services that you think do a great job.

Related posts:

Hello there! If you liked the post, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Inficone runs on the Genesis Framework

Genesis empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Whether you're a novice or advanced developer, Genesis provides the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go. It's that simple - start using Genesis now!