TinyURL is probably the most popular URL shortener out there but they are in for some serious competition from bit.ly - a newcomer that is seriously very good.
If you share links in emails or the social web, here are three reasons why bit.ly will win your heart:
1. bit.ly creates a mirror copy of the underlying web page at the time of compressing the URL (see example).
That means there won’t be any orphan short URLs because even if the target page is offline or removed from the web, you can still access that information from bit.ly’s cache.
2. With bit.ly, you get to know the exact number of times any particular short URL was clicked on the web be that inside email messages, IM clients or regular web pages.
3. Other than counting clicks, bit.ly all tracks the referrals so you know exactly where the clicks are originating from. (see example)
All the data is available as public RSS feeds that is like icing on the cake. See what Dave, Adam and Marshall have to say about bit.ly.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/bitly-best-url-compression-service/3852/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
won’t this cause massive duplicate penalty issues and other problems for any sites that get cached by the new system along the lines of the link and workfriendly debacle?
Written by David Bradley on 07.09.08
@David, Hi david, I don’t think so. Although I am not sure about the legal aspects, but the cached copy is only showed if the original is down, so no users are being denied access to their content (in case of workfriendly, the users never reached the author’s website).
Second, I doubt that Bitly will allow the content it caches to be mirrored by search engines. This should further reduce complaints from authors.
Finally, the page shown is actually a one-time snapshot.
Written by Vaibhav on 07.09.08
bit.ly looks like a well considered and well constructed solution - thank you.
Written by Gideon on 07.09.08
Okay. That’s good to know. workfriendly, as you know is a b*tch, although I’ve implemented a .htacess solution to block them now.
Written by David Bradley on 07.09.08
Brilliant!
Written by DieLaughing on 07.09.08
@David - workfriendly.net (when I last checked) was down. If you try to visit it, it shows a domain parking page
Written by Vaibhav on 07.09.08
Ah, that’s good news. All my campaigning the campaigning by antiplagiarism sites obviously worked. I can tidy up my .htaccess now,
Written by David Bradley on 07.09.08
I think it is just a matter of time before content from these mirrors and proxy sites gets kicked out of Google’s index.
Regard bit.ly, they store a copy of web pages using Amazon webservices. It would be a good idea if they block the googlebots from accessing their ‘cache’.
Written by Amit Agarwal on 07.09.08
Amit, I left a comment here yesterday about bit.ly ignoring web page authors’ cache control headers, but it appears to have been deleted… I’m confused.
Written by Jason on 07.10.08
I much prefer the snipr.com (snipurl) service.
They provide much of the functionality you mention here. RSS Feeds, Web Stats, Custom Keyworkds.
Where they top bit.ly (IMO) is that snipr gives me webstats for people that click specifically on my link. That is more useful to me than finding out how many people in the world clicked on the same link.
Snipr also has much more customization so that users can adjust the service to their needs.
The only problem I see with any of these services not named tinyurl is that people may be more skeptical to click on a link from a service like bit.ly or snirp. Again, what I like about snipr is that the name gives the user some idea of what the link will do — whereas ‘bit.ly’ is too vague unless you are in the tech sphere.
Written by Anish on 07.11.08