This article will walk you through how to import/create branded links in bulk using a Google Sheet on Google Drive.
First, go to your Google Sheet, on the top row under your heading you will see 'Add-on' click this to reveal the drop-down menu. On this list click on 'Get Add-ons' where you can download and install the sheet extension.
Alternatively, you can click Rebrandly.live/SheetExtension to bring you directly to the download.
Once installed the extension will be found in the new item in the ‘Add-ons’ menu. You will now be able to transform every Google Sheet Spreadsheet into a bulk link import tool.
How It's Done
Click on ‘Make this a Rebrandly Bulk Links sheet’
Be careful: All data on your current sheet will be deleted so be sure to open a new blank spreadsheet to perform this task.
Once the process starts you can see the sheet transforming adapting it for the link creation.
The very first thing to do is to provide your API key, you can find it here. Your API key will be copied into the sidebar menu which will also automatically populate your domain name(s).
Attention: In order to use this addon, you must have registered or set up at least one branded domain, go here to register one.
There are four important columns:
(1) Destination Links (2) Slashtag (3) Title/Description (4) Shortened
The first three are used to collect data and create the short link, the fourth will display the created short URL.
Between the three columns, only Destination Links is a mandatory field, the other two, Slashtag and Title/Description, are optional.
- Destination Links: URL to be shortened
- Slashtag: the Slug/Keyword after '/' in your link: (e.g Domain.xyz/Slashtag) must be unique. If you do not specify a Slashtag, one will be generated at random
- Title/Description: Description of your link this will only be visible on your Rebrandly dashboard
Once you insert the destination links and are ready shorten them, just select the rows and click ‘Rebrand selected rows’, to begin the shortening process.
Info: You aren’t required to fill in all of the fields for each batch of links; the system recognizes the data provided for each link and will create the relative short URL regardless.
Important: if you shorten a link which has already been shortened, the system will give you the “already exists” error, if you want to edit this link you need to do it manually.
Useful Information:
- Expected Speed of Process: The process of link creation is quite slow, the process depends on the limited computational power that the add-on has, so it's perfectly normal for every interaction on the sheet (API key insertion, short link creation) to take up to few seconds.
- This add on is a good solution for creating less than 1,000 branded links per import. But we don't encourage users to use it for significantly large bulk imports. In that case, we recommend using our Link Import feature.
- URL validation: The Destination Link only accepts destination links, any other value is not accepted and therefore refused by the sheet.
- Http/s: If you don't provide a protocol for the Destination Link 'Http' is assumed
- Errors: Every error relative to the creation of a short URL is shown in the relative row on the 'E' column
This Article is about:
- Bulk Branded link import
- Import custom short links
- Import of links from a Google Spreadsheet
- Import/create branded links in bulk
- Google Sheet and Rebrandly
See Also:
Comments
22 comments
Hi - is there any way to see how many times a link has been clicked IN google sheets? e.g. with a formula like =rbrand_clicks(CELL)
Hi Muzafar,
For that, you need to use our Zapier integration:
https://www.rebrandly.com/apps/zapier
or, if you can code, look at our API:
https://developers.rebrandly.com
Thanks for your reply - which particular part of your Zapier integration can do that?
Rebrandly+Google sheet
Hi David - that's very vague as there are a few Zaps for Rebrandly + Google Sheets at the link you provided.
Zapier integration, manually set up - only gives the option to create branded links - not to fetch statistics such as clicks from links that are already shortened. This is what I am looking for. If you have a way of doing this please do let me know. Alternatively, I'd appreciate a link directly to the solution as the above is too general.
Thanks!
It could be a great addon if:
- the api key wouldnt be visible for all the users
- you could modify the file as you want, lets say we would like to add our own Google Analytics tags and so on, and than have the fields that allow you do the shortening.
Our engineers wanted to keep the form very simple. Allowing other settings for the link could complicate it too much. We will anyway evaluate a more advanced version of this same tool.
David -- we'd love to see UTM tags here too. Perhaps as an option?
Hi Joe, at the moment our engineers do not plan to include UTM. We will instead create a link import tool build inside Rebrandly.
David -- open sourcing the code for this would allow people to build their own integrations and be a good example of how to use the rebrandly API. I'm sure extending this to support UTM isn't a ton of work and it would let you keep the current integration super simple.
Is there a way to use the API in both directions? So the existing links in rebrandly read out and represent in the spreadsheet.
Hi Franz,
At the moment there is no way to automatically export links into a spreadsheet or into an external file. If you're interested in exporting new links you may find it helpful to use our Zapier integration: https://rebrandly.support/Zapier-Integration
hi Katie, thanks for that answer, but the link does not work.
Hi Franz,
Please try the link again.
I have been successfully using the Google Sheets plugin. Today, as I was working with it, it just up and stopped working. Are there limitations in the number of links we can have in a Google Sheet? I attempted to generate a new API Key, remove the old one, that didn't help. I created a new sheet, that didn't help. Any ideas on what could've made it stop working? It simply will not create short URLs now when selecting the rows.
Thanks,
Brian
Hi Brian,
Although there are no formal limitations in the number of links that can be created/imported with the Google Sheets plugin, it is not done to specifically support a huge quantity. We have another procedure for that and our engineers can help you directly. Please contact our support via https://rebrandly.support/contact
Thanks for creating this tool! If I add columns & formulas to the same sheet (to do my own UTM construction) will the rebranding function still work?
Hi Armin, Thanks for your question! You can add additional columns with more content, but the way the sheet is set up, we will not import content from columns other than the ones that we created. You can fill additional columns with your own custom content or formulas that helps you to fill our cells though. If you need additional support here please get in touch with us here: https://rebrandly.support/contact and one of our team will happily help!
Hi!
We really need to be able to update the destination of a shortened link programatically, is this possible through Google Sheets?
Thanks
Hi Piers,
You can't do that through Google Sheets, but here's the correct info to do it via API: https://developers.rebrandly.com/reference#update-link-endpoint
If you have any trouble, open up a support ticket on https://rebrandly.support/contact
Colm
Is there a way to generate rebrandly links in a google sheet like what I did here with the bitly access token?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eMhS2k5y7T3ZGzxmv3hXvwYIIQW-QEkqlwnUGY4LJyQ/edit?usp=sharing
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