twilio sms, can't send goo.gl links in message

Question

I'm trying to send out some sms messages via php, using twilio, that have some short text ads at the end, which include a link. I'm shortening the links with the google url shortener to keep the message length down. The problem, is that, twilio doesn't seem to want to send messages with goo.gl links in them. Other links work fine, including links shortened using tinyurl. Apparently, it has nothing to do with my code, because I have the same problem when trying to send the messages directly from the twilio web interface.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening? I can't find any reference to it in the documentation anywhere or on google.

To replicate just go to www.twilio.com and try to send an sms message like: http://goo.gl/nqUc5

Note: The problem is not the length of the message. Changing just a single letter so that the url is not goo.gl will make it work.

Answer 1

I asked Twilio what's going on. Here is their response:

"goo.gl" links started being filtered by certain carriers very recently. we have escalated this issue to the carriers [and] have been working to try to get the filter removed. Unfortunately, we are [not] encouraged by the progress we are making and this could end up being permanent.

Answer 2

Really this is a question for twilio customer support team, perhaps there is some restrictions on that particular short url services as I suspect its sometimes used to masquerade dodgy links, they may be able to lift if for your account if they have such a system in place. https://www.twilio.com/help/contact

There is also a community forum you could ask: http://forum.twilio.com/twilio/?from_gsfn=true

Answer 3

I'd like to add to Andrew McKinlay's answer. I have an application that is working just fine on AT&T, but Verizon phones won't get the messages that contain goo.gl links.

(I don't seem to have rep to comment or up vote... sorry to put an answer instead, but hopefully this will help someone else with this issue.)