Eddystone URL not working for specific URLs

BLE Beacons Eddystone
1

Hi all

I have tested the Eddystone URL protocol with the default URL (https://twitter.com/estimote) and I was able to receive a notification on my Android device, but when I changed it to https://goo.gl/VJm5q2 no notification is coming through. This is a simple link to the Google Play store for the Facebook app which was shortened through the goo.gl URL shortener (https://goo.gl/) since you are only able to provide URL addresses that are shorter than 17 bytes.

The URL was tested and successfully verified on: https://beaufortfrancois.github.io/sandbox/physical-web/url-validator/

So I can’t see a reason why this should not work.

Can someone please provide me with a reason as to why this is not working or a possible way to fix this. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

2

Google has some scoring/ranking mechanism, which means sometimes they won’t show URLs that are known e.g. to have a very low click-rate. They will also hide notifications/URLs that you’ve dismissed in the past.

All in all, it’s hard for us to know the specifics or help here, because it’s Google’s product. So maybe it’d be better to take your issue/question directly to the Physical Web crew:

What I said in the first paragraph is in fact the knowledge I gathered from this very GitHub (:

3

Thanks for the feedback.

Is there maybe a different way for the Estimote beacons to allow me to use the original intended URL? The reason I had to shorten it was because it did not allow the URL address to be more that 17 bytes, which is really quite short.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

4

Not at this time, we’ll have to wait for Bluetooth 5 adoption for that. (It increases the max packet size.)

Maybe try a different shortener? (Just remember to use an HTTPS one.)

5

I think it would give the same problem, which would mean that I won’t be able to use Eddystone URL.

@heypiotr do you know when Bluetooth 5 will be implemented in Estimote beacons?