What Are Go Links?

Go links are short, human-readable URLs that are easy to share, easy to type into your address bar, and easy to remember. Traditional URLs were designed to help computers locate resources—not to help humans recall or communicate them.

Take a typical Google Drive link, for example:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B-M6yw-mqEl9U2cc2VKIwvOF_jCSrGByga9k7z4sxBQ/edit


This URL works perfectly for a browser, but it is nearly impossible for a person to remember, dictate verbally, or retype without error.

A go link transforms that long, cryptic URL into something simple and intuitive:

go/welcome


By adopting go links from Trotto, anyone in your company can type go/welcome directly into their browser and instantly arrive at the correct resource. They can share it verbally in a meeting, drop it into Slack or email, and recall it days or weeks later without searching.

At their core, go links bridge the gap between how humans think and how systems store information.

Why Is This Still a Problem in 2025?

In the age of AI, automation, and knowledge work, why are long URLs still slowing teams down?

The problem is not a lack of tools—it’s cognitive overload.

Think about:

• The number of browser tabs you have open right now
• The size of your bookmark bar
• The volume of Slack messages and email threads you search through
• The links you vaguely remember using but can’t quite find

Modern knowledge workers are constantly context-switching. Every extra second spent searching for a link is a small tax on focus and productivity. Over the course of a day, those seconds turn into minutes. Over a month, they turn into hours.

Go links help teams navigate this complexity by returning to something simpler: short, memorable, and shareable links.

Examples commonly used across organizations include:

go/IT  
go/code  
go/issues  
go/HR  
go/holidayparty


Instead of remembering where something lives—or who sent the link—you remember what it is. That mental shift is powerful.

What Makes Go Links Different from URL Shorteners?

At first glance, go links may sound similar to traditional URL shorteners like bit.ly or tinyurl. However, they serve a fundamentally different purpose.

URL shorteners are designed for external sharing. They optimize for:

• Public links
• Character limits (e.g., social media)
• Click tracking and analytics

Go links, by contrast, are designed for internal productivity. They optimize for:

• Human memory
• Speed of access
• Daily repetition
• Team-wide consistency

A shortened link like bit.ly/3Jf92Ks may be shorter than the original URL, but it is still meaningless to a human. A go link like go/benefits communicates intent immediately.

Go links become part of your company’s shared language.

Common Go Link Use Cases

Go links shine in everyday, repeatable workflows. Below are concrete examples of how they save time at the individual, team, and company level.

Daily Individual Use Cases

These are links you personally use multiple times per week—sometimes multiple times per day.

• go/HNNews
  Takes you to the front page of Hacker News.
• go/OKRs
  Opens a Google Sheet containing company goals and metrics.
• go/TinySeed
  Links to a Notion page with TinySeed resources.

Instead of bookmarking these links (and remembering which folder they’re in), you simply type what you already know.

Regular Team Use Cases

These are shared links used by specific teams or functions.

• go/meet-Andy
  A personal Zoom meeting link coworkers can use instantly.
• go/gh/[repo-name]
  Direct access to a specific GitHub repository.
• go/jira/[issue-number]
  Deep links into Jira tickets without searching.

Teams adopt naming conventions organically, which makes links predictable even if you’ve never used them before.

Company-Wide Use Cases

These are some of the most valuable go links because they eliminate repeated questions and Slack interruptions.

• go/holidayparty
  Event details, location, and RSVP information.
• go/IT
  Central hub for IT requests, policies, and tooling.
• go/HR
  Benefits, 401(k) details, PTO policies, and onboarding resources.

New hires learn these links quickly, and long-tenured employees rely on them without thinking.

The Real ROI of Go Links

On any single use case, a go link might save only a few seconds. That may not sound significant—but the value compounds quickly.

Consider:

• 50 employees
• Saving just 30 seconds per day
• Across 20 workdays per month

That’s 8+ hours saved per month across the company—nearly an entire workday—just by reducing link friction.

And that estimate is conservative.

Go links also:

• Reduce interruptions (“Where’s that link?”)
• Decrease context switching
• Improve onboarding speed
• Lower cognitive load for knowledge workers

They are searchable, more flexible than bookmarks, and dramatically more usable than long URLs.

How Go Links Improve Knowledge Management

Most companies already invest heavily in documentation tools like Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, or SharePoint. The challenge is not creating knowledge—it’s retrieving it quickly.

Go links act as a lightweight navigation layer on top of your existing tools.

Instead of remembering:

• Which tool something lives in
• Which folder it’s under
• Who last shared the link

You remember a simple, logical name.

This makes go links especially powerful for:

• Runbooks and playbooks
• Incident response documentation
• Internal dashboards
• On-call resources
• Executive reporting

They don’t replace your knowledge base—they make it usable.

Go Links and Search: Better Together

Modern go link platforms like Trotto make links searchable. This creates a hybrid experience:

• Type when you know the name
• Search when you don’t

This is a significant advantage over bookmarks, which are private, siloed, and poorly indexed. With go links, the best links rise to the top through usage and shared conventions.

Over time, your organization builds a living map of how work actually gets done.

Security and Governance Considerations

Because go links sit at the center of daily workflows, governance matters.

Enterprise-ready go link systems should support:

• Role-based access controls
• Ownership and auditing
• Expiration and redirects
• Centralized management

Trotto’s approach ensures go links are fast and flexible without becoming a security liability. Admins maintain control, while teams retain autonomy.

Why Go Links Scale with Your Organization

Go links work just as well for a 10-person startup as they do for a 10,000-person enterprise.

As organizations grow:

• URLs get longer
• Tools proliferate
• Context gets harder to maintain

Go links scale because they rely on shared language, not technical complexity. They evolve naturally as teams evolve.

What starts as go/HR may later branch into:

• go/benefits
• go/handbook
• go/onboarding

No retraining required.

Getting Started with Go Links

The fastest way to understand the value of go links is to start using them.

Most teams begin with:

• A handful of company-wide links
• Personal productivity links
• A small set of team conventions

From there, adoption tends to spread organically—because once people experience the speed and simplicity, they don’t want to go back.

Final Thoughts

Go links may seem like a small improvement, but they solve a universal problem: finding the right information at the right time without breaking focus.

In a world where knowledge work dominates and attention is scarce, that advantage compounds quickly.

If you want to see how go links work in practice—and how teams use them every day—check out this blog post to learn how go links work.

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