URL shortening services are used by millions of people on daily basis as they a serve very important purposes in areas like social networking and internet marketing and are extremely useful in Internet conversations on services like twitter when someone want to share a link. With only 140 characters available to deliver the message a normal link can take up most of the space. Besides shrinking URLs some of the services provide features that can be more useful than you may think. If you are not aware of the possibilities keep reading.
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What is a URL shortener
A URL shortener is an online application that allows the user to enter a full URL for any specific web page, click on a button, and automatically shortens a long wordy URL to a short domain name and uses a 5 or 6 character code. When users are clicking on that short links they are redirected to the original URLs just as if they had entered or clicked on that.
Where URL Shorteners are useful
First, it’s very useful for micro bloggers, such as Twitter users, who like to share URLs in their posts. However, with a 140-character limit on sites like Twitter, it’s often difficult to include a lengthy URL along with an explanation of why you’re sharing it. Second, URL shorteners are useful because they can preserve a link to a specific web page even if the URL to that page changes in the future. Third, some URL shorteners allow you to track the number of clicks your shortened link gets allowing you to analyze the type of traffic you’re generating to your website, blog, etc. from your links on Twitter, Facebook, and so on. This allows you to understand in greater detail where your promotional efforts are having the biggest impact.
This is also certainly true for marketers using social media channels to reach out. shorteners are useful in internet, email and mobile marketing. In email marketing marketing you may have text wrapping on long URLs in text e-mails and also benefit from tracking clicks. On mobile the little space available simply calls for short URLs. In the area of affiliate marketing the short URLs also have turned out to be handy for hiding the affiliate links that for some people affect trust negatively – for a reason.
List of useful URL Shorteners to try out
1. http://su.pr/
Features:
- Real time analytics showing how many people click through your links, how many came via StumbleUpon in particular and who the most prolific “reTweeters” have been.
- Easy publishing to Twitter and Facebook, including the ability to schedule those links and messages to be pushed out at a particular time.
- “Suggested posting time” metrics, based on historical data concerning when people are most likely to click through your links.
- A handy bookmarklet that makes submission of links quick and easy.
- Good to build traffic
2. http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url
What the Ow.ly link shortening offers:
- Sharing functionality remains the focal point of the Ow.ly social bar. This feature will keep your eyes on prize content and allow you to share easily and frequently.
- Slimmer and non-obtrusive.
- Bookmarking of links that you have retweeted.
3. http://bit.ly/
Features:
- Sharing functionality.
- History Viewer.
- Advance Tools, side bar bookmarklet, developer tools.
- Good to build traffic
4. http://is.gd/
Features:
- Shorten web addresses for emails, forum posts, blogs etc. which cannot handle long URLs and might wrap them, making them unclickable
- Lower the character count when texting web addresses to a mobile phone
- Hide the real URLs of affiliate links from visitors to your site
- Obscure your real email address from bots which harvest them to spam.
- Circumvent protections on sites which don’t allow direct links to a competitor’s site (if you are violating a site’s terms you do so at your own risk)
- Clean up bookmarks for social bookmarking sites or sites with low character limits like Twitter
- If you dislike a website and have to mention it (e.g. when complaining about it), link via is.gd so that your link does not help the site’s search engine positioning
5. http://cli.gs/cligs/new
Features:
- Statistics
- Permanent redirects
6. http://www.adjix.com/WebObjects/Adjix.woa/
Features:
- Earn revenue sharing your links
- Link data available
- White Label – Use your own domain name for shortened links
7. http://budurl.com/
Features:
- Shrink any URL into a short BudURL
- Inbound links redirect with a 307 for maximum SEO performance
- Organize all of your BudURLs into a single account
- Add notes to each BudURL to keep track of where you place it (ex: Twitter profile link, LinkedIn comment, Email signature, banner advertisement, etc.)
- Watch your Click Stream to see real-time click activity including the referrer, IP Address, Network, etc.
- Create custom BudURL vanity aliases like budurl.com/mylink
- Edit destination URL
- Reset click values
- Delete BudURLs
- Unique Visits per click
- Download click traffic
- See the keywords used to find your BudURL
8. http://tinyurl.com/
Features:
- Browser toolbar
- Control your alias by providing a custom one
- URL Redirection
- Hide Affiliate URLs
- Preview Feature
9. http://www.snipurl.com/
Features:
- Nip many URLs at once
- Attach a private key for protection
- Has an API to create shortened URL’s in your browser.
10. http://blinky.me/
Features:
- Segmentation functionality with every link shared.
- Get piles of additional data about the people who click the links.
There are many URL shorteners, but i wanted to keep the review to include my 10 favorites. They all have features that are beneficial and they tend to be user friendly also. I hope you will try some of the services and maybe you will find a favorite.
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Such a good work . Thanks for the posting…
Here on Martha’s Vineyard, we’ve created our own link-shortener: mv2.me. It’s the only link-shortener built for a destination community. Furthermore, we’ve augmented our link shortener API to include geographic and calendar event metadata. We are using these tools to support a unique social platform that helps visitors and local residents alike enjoy the island.
Google is now offering one that compliments your own domain name. Short Links for Google Apps.
Thanks. That’s really good info.
Actually, URL shorteners are evil. They break the web.
Why? Because they place a layer of indirection between a link and it’s target, and this layer is entirely dependent on the continued existence of one organisation (tinyurl, bitly, whatever). When the organisation falls off the web (which will happen) or even when it clears its database, all those links will cease to work.
So, you open an old web page or email with a link to something really useful – but you can’t follow it anymore. And what’s worse, you have no idea where it used to go, so you can’t look for it manually on the same site, and you can’t even go to web.archive.org and try to find a copy of it. It’s gone. Forever.
PLEASE everyone stop using the damn things for all but the most ephemeral of purposes.
@tim, you have some valid points here I think…
you have a point..but it’s hard not to use them on twitter.
Check out http://cru.ms. It has similar stat options and you can tweet your post right from the shortened link. I also use Hootsuite which pretty much rules.
This one really sucks. I tried to shorten http://microsoft.com and it shortened it to http://apple.com. That can’t be right.
Here’s another one that I’m working on with someone: http://twfb.us
I just took the url to this page then
Shortened it on bit.ly. Then I took the bit.ly url and
Shortened it on tunyurl.com. Then I took the tinurl url and
Shortened it on bit.ly again. Then I took the bit.ly url and
Shortened it on tinyurl.com. Then I took the tinyrul url and
Shortened it on bit.ly.
I was very tired a this point so I had to stop. Here is my masterpeice. The result of all that hard work. Check this out.
http://bitli.es/fgIUbB
There is also polish site – http://bisi.pl .
That’s the problem! Most of them JUST shorten URLs. http://onecent.us also allows custom URLS, which many others do, it allows you to add a movie style RatedG, R or X to your short URL OPTIONALLY to give a watm fuzzy or even warn against adult content, which NO ONE else does. They also donate 90% of revenue to CHARITY! They offer sweeMail © 2010 which is a unique way of building a form email for people to write their congressman or promote products/services/websites, VERY cool, NO ONE ELSE HAS EVEN THOUGHT OF THIS! These guys ROCK!
The yTame link shortener has superbly short URLs, permanent links, and offers stat tracking also: http://yta.me
An offshoot of this is currently being developed as a CakePHP plugin also, to allow for open-source, custom URL shortening on a per-site basis.
Keep Track of the latest updates on facebook:
http://yta.me/3
Or Twitter:
http://yta.me/2
Superbly short URLs? So does everyone, no? 3 characters dot 2 characters slash something in base 36 or 62 arithmetic is going to be short, no? Why doesn’t anyone employ dashes and @ signs and underscores, all the allowable special characters to add some oomph and s t r e t c h those precious shortest URLs that get used up so quickly? Is it just too difficult? I think not. Then again, we haven’t done that, heh. We did however go to the trouble of buying a whole family line of 3 character dot US domains up when we could, six of ‘em, in our back pocket. NO ONE is gonna out short us down the road. Also on the subject of branding? Do you know how hard it is to paste a URL into your own homegrown redirect page and call em clever things like 0-9 a-z A-Z and so on? You could do it by hand in an hour perhaps. There is WAY too much jive and snake oil in this business. It’ll be interesting to see how http://urlshorteners.org fares in its attempt to organize this wild wild west show. They have THE list ULTIMATE list, 1300 or so of these unique little beauties that have infected the web like a new strain of Herpes. Hope they fare better than 301works did. Anyone even KNOW what happened to them? Peace, and keep it short and sweet, Bill Purkins, http://OneCent.US. I will not even bother to tell you what I think of open source. eep.
url shortener with over 4k domains – thats insane ammount of unique links you can generate http://blackhatshortener.com
I do not like this one… too much for a shortener. Run by a guy with only a gmail address. Sucks.
Great post! I’ve been wondering about the various features of different link shorteners and this was an extremely helpful summary.
I used to use TinyURL, but now I use http://twig.mx a lot. It is fast.
Fast? What’s fast? The redirect or the site itself when you are shortening? http://OneCent.US lets you specify the redirect wait time from 0 to 5 seconds so you can add an HTML formatted message to the user as sort of an intro. Very cool and entirely optional, the default is immediate… The redirect time itself depends on the server bandwidth speeds of the origin and the destination sites as well as your own internet connection I would think, so speed is very subjective methinks… For a full list of 1100 + url shorteners, see http://urlshorteners.org .
gotta add to the list a new site that’s up and coming and does the job it needs to with out all the extra fluff and stuff.
b2l.us
http://ww.urlbis.com/ is certainly the best url shortener
I’ve been using a new shortner, its like 20% shorter than the big boys like bit.ly. It does statistics for every link and if you sign up you can see statistics across all of your links. Its http://tvsl.eu check it out
I tried to get tms.com but it was already taken, plus it is similar to tmz.com so maybe they have them both, but I agree the shorter the better.
I use http://Lovebyt.es I highly recommend it!
Found a great URL shortener, http://S-M.co – they offer some unique things that other don’t.
Easy login/ Registration process, you can register/login with your facebook account (If you already have one, which most people do) and if not registration is very simple and fast.
Real-time stats page without refreshing, you don’t need to refresh the page over and over to see people click your links. Once they click your shortened URL you can instantly see it in your “dashboard”.
Also their URL is a global domain name, whether this helps i dont know.. but it surely doesn’t hurt! They also use your pages attributes, this includes meta tags and page title.
The design is clean, simple, yet professional.. hands down my favorite shortener.
Salamat Dustin!
Thank you for this write up. I will definitely be using one of these in my upcoming teeshirt venture. From the get go, I’m looking at SU.pr because they seem to be growing very well and attracting lots of interests from FB and google. Thanks again! Mikey
dis is the most simplest and best url shortener i hv ever come across so far!!!!!!runs very smooothly!!!!
http://www.mislead.in is the most simplest and best url shortener i hv ever come across so far!!!!!!runs very smooothly!!!!
http://u2s.in
A Very New short URL service with new functionality…
* Set number of times URL get accessed
* set expiry date for each URL
* make custom URL string
* get full of details reports of the url statistics
* auto delete can be set
* make very very long URL to too short
enjoy… u2s.in
thanks for sharing!
Looks like, your trackback doesn’t work. Can I ping your site?
Thank you for sharing information. Thank a lot.
This is why I go to your site for my information. Thanks!
you can use http://www.Goder.co.cc for shortner your long url’s
I use http://lovebyt.es it has a 100% uptime and it’s really responsive
A new URL shortner services
http://ab.cd
A B C D…. its easy..
nice article,
I can say reading article below can take this topic further :
http://socialbeaker.blogspot.com/2011/06/top-6-link-shortening-services.html
thank you
thanks i using it now!!!!!
Just created a shortner at http://vib.tw check it out and give me your feedback. Thanks
http://vib.tw is a good one too
Another top Fastest growing url shortner http://adflav.com that pays. I swear i have made over $600 in 2 weeks. Only 5 weeks old site and is doing me real good.
I prefer the http://min.ms
Isn’t http://qweop.com much better if really all you need is a URL Shortener?
You are forgetting http://nowtweet.it/ which ranks higher than most of these shortener for key terms in google. Worth looking at because it is so friendly and simple.
URL shorteners may be good but this url lengthener is hilarious.
http://joypoppin.com/
I found this URL shortener http://klip.im which i like. Nice interface and it gives you a QR code too for your mobile marketing requirements. Like!!!
Guys, try this site http://www.cutpit.com, really cool features and interface, also seems very reliable.
i use http://ki.tl/K its quick and simple to use and has a multi url shortener!
im using http://www.adflav.com best shorten there is
I’ve found another – 301 redirects only, custom urls, no ads.
http://addr.co
I use http://www.chrst.ph
These are very helpful! I’ve been a fan of bit.ly for a while now but I am starting to lean toward stumble upons shortening service. Great overview article. Thanks!
Great list, thanks a bunch guys!
You may want to review this one http://sy.pe it does have great UI, API and stats, everything sooo comfy, my favorite.
Well worth checking out http://bdb.im
great list!!
i recommend a new one but beta.
http://srtn.in
very simple.
First of all thanks for sharing the list of all the best URL shortener websites.
The concept of URL shortener is very helpful, the URLs will be shortened so that one can post them on the social networking portals like Twitter and Facebook or video based websites like YouTube in a hassle free way.
Thanks for sharing all the info about the service.
Good help can be called a short service options http://hsu.su a lot of advantages – from the custom url and ending with detailed statistics on clicks. I recommend!
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