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Branded link shortener: when a name beats four characters
A branded link trades characters for recognition. Here is when that trade pays, what it costs in DNS and length, and the two protections that stop the namespace being abused.
By Wasim Idrishi · Updated · 2 min read
The argument for branded links is not that they perform better. It is that a reader can tell who sent them, and a reader who can tell who sent a link is a reader who clicks it.
That is worth paying characters for in some places and not in others.
Where the trade pays
| Situation | Use |
|---|---|
| Transactional SMS people were expecting | Your own domain, recognition is the whole point |
| Cold outreach | Your own domain, an unknown host reads as spam |
| Print, posters, packaging | Either, the QR carries it and nobody types it |
| High-volume SMS in a metered market | The plain 10-character link |
| A link read aloud on radio or in a video | A custom alias, so it can be said and spelled |
| An internal link in a document | Whatever is fastest |
Three levels of branding
Custom alias. Keep the host, choose the words. gc.mw/spring instead of a random code. 4 to 64 characters, letters, digits, hyphens and underscores. It is the cheapest kind of branding and the only one that needs no DNS.
Claimed subdomain. name.gc.mw as a namespace of your own on our domain. Nothing to configure, and the name is the same one your bio page uses, because names are one registry across the products.
Your own domain. links.yourbrand.com, with a CNAME and a verification TXT record. Certificates handled, redirects handled, analytics per link and per domain. Three domains are included on Business and Team.
The two protections that make this safe to offer
A shortener that lets anyone register any word is a phishing kit with a pricing page. Two lists sit in front of every alias.
Reserved words cover the paths the app itself uses, so nobody can register a code that shadows a real route. Brand protection refuses aliases containing a protected brand as a whole token, a prefix or a suffix, which is what stops somebody registering a bank or a payment provider name on our domain and sending it to a fake login page.
Both lists are configuration, not code, so they grow without a deploy. The link checker exists for the other side of the same problem: seeing where a link goes before you trust it.
What branding does not do
It does not make a link shorter, it does not improve deliverability on its own, and it does not stop a filter that has already decided your domain is suspect. What it does is remove one reason for a person not to click, which is usually enough to justify it.
Related: custom URL shortener, custom domain links, and branded links and click-through rate.
Questions people ask
What is a branded link?
A short link whose host, or whose words after the slash, identify the sender. links.yourbrand.com/spring and gc.mw/spring are both branded in that sense. The point is that a reader can tell who sent it before clicking.
Does branding make links longer?
Usually yes. links.yourbrand.com is 22 characters before the slash against five for gc.mw. That is a trade, not a free win, and it is the right trade wherever recognition matters more than character count.
What DNS do I need?
A CNAME from your subdomain to cname.gc.mw and one TXT record for verification. Certificates are issued and renewed automatically once both resolve. Use a subdomain, not the root, because a CNAME on the root conflicts with your mail and website records.
What happens to my links if I remove the domain?
They are paused, not deleted. Reconnect the domain or another one and re-enable them. Links are never silently moved back onto gc.mw under a different host.