The Benefits And Pitfalls of URL Shorteners
The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
There are a number of uses for URL shorteners, some less upstanding than others, but I had begun to wonder what drew people to those services that are the most popular. Undeniably, TinyURL is the most visible URL shortener, used extensively in social media, but it seems to derive its popularity mainly from being one of the oldest services in the niche.
As is usually the case when something becomes popular, dozens of enterprising young things jumped aboard the URL shortening bandwagon and we now have a large inventory of sites with silly names from which to choose. You would think that members of the SEO community, as link-happy as we are, could pick through the offerings and choose the best sites when we need to shorten a URL. So, do we?
A quick explanation of why URL shorteners exist, if you're not entirely sure: this is an ugly, long, unseemly URL:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=north+sydney+olympic+pool&sll=-33.870565,151.213208&sspn=0.242301,0.528717&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.84939,151.2117&spn=0.007574,0.016522&t=h&z=17
Some email clients will break it up by line and a user--especially a technically-unsavvy one--could have trouble actually accessing it. My really unsavvy friends will be scared of it. My dad might think it was a virus.
Social networking / "microblogging" sites like Twitter and Plurk only allow 140 characters per message, so a user could never include this map's URL, as it is 184 characters long. As I pseudo-mentioned above, people also use these sites to disguise affiliate links. Several times a year, but most notably on the first of April, hiding links to videos of Rick Astley also becomes popular. Just a note: the most popular Rick Roll video has quite a distinctive URL: it ends in "uuiU" so you may want to shorten that one next time you prank somebody because more and more people are starting to recognise it. Anyway.
Once shortened by TinyURL, the map's URL looks like this: http://tinyurl.com/5ut47m. In an ironic twist, my dad and most of my other older relatives would be far happier clicking on that, even though they have no idea what awaits them.
But what are the pros and cons of the available shortening services? Most of the time when I see people sharing links via shortened URLs, they use TinyURL without really thinking, even though it is rarely the best option. I wanted to put together a list of the sites I feel are best in any given situation.
Win: Great for links on the go. When you don't care how many people click the link, where they clicked from, or even if they clicked the link in the first place. TinyURL is fine. Twitter, and many of its third party clients, automatically turn long URLs into TinyURLs, so sometimes you'll end up with one without even meaning to.
Fail: TinyURL is terrible for garnering attention. I have definitely developed a bit of TinyURL blindness. The use of TinyURL also doesn't elicit a high degree of trust, as more experienced users know that it is the quick-and-dirty option for URL shortening services.
Bookmarking? Yes. URLs can be shortened via a toolbar bookmark.
Customisation? Yes. You don't have to live with 5ut47m on the end of your map's URL. http://tinyurl.com/sydneypool will resolve the map as well. Beware, however, that /rickastleyvideo might give the game away. I don't suggest trying that, as I inadvertently Rick Rolled myself ten minutes ago whilst trying out customised URLs and had to crash my browser. Genius.
API? No.
Win: Very short URLs. The diminutive domain name puts is.gd ahead of its competitors in the game of short URLs. Some TLDs alone are four characters long: weighing in at six, including the stop and a slash, this one takes up very little real estate.
Fail: Is.gd provides no customisation options and no click tracking, so its strength lies almost solely in its brevity. That and the fact that I read it as "is good," which I assume they did on purpose.
Bookmarking? Yes, as with TinyURL, is.gd can be dragged and dropped into your Bookmarks toolbar.
Customisation? No. You're stuck with whatever is.gd gives you.
API? No.
Win: Customisation combined with safety. The URL you see below is amended with a code (it doesn't have to be a number) so that a URL can be customised to include a keyword (for usability, not SEO, obviously). The purpose of the code it to make the URL less guessable: if for some reason you don't want people coming across your URL whilst browsing possible customised URLs, adding a code of some sort ensures your URL's privacy. I can't think of a huge number of situations in which this would be necessary, but it's there if you need it.
Registered members can track all the URLs they've shortened, as well as access RSS feeds of the URLs, just their popular links and just popular links from the past month. There is also the option to download past URLs in Excel format. This service also provides a click count and a unique click count, so I can rule out the sixteen times I clicked on my own link. Just checking that it worked, of course.
Bookmarking? Yes.
Customisation? You bet.
API? Yes.
NSFW.in
Win: This is pretty neat. If you actually care that your friends keep their jobs, you may want to consider using NSFW.in to shorten your dodgy URLs. If a piece of content might get people into trouble if they viewed it at work, put the link through this site. It will show them the original URL and prompt them to agree to be taken to the page.
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I have to assume that there are some employers who'd rather their employees not read the Moz
Bookmarking: No. Although if you need to bookmark NSFW.in, you may have some other problems that need addressing.
Customisation: See above. None at all.
API? No. Damnit.
Win: Simple. Very, very simple.
Fail: I realise that "url" appears in the middle of the name and it's cute and all that, but there are too many Qs and not enough vowels and I want to spell the domain name "queryq." The name reminds me of some of the things I don't like about them newfangled domain names. This isn't good when you're trying to create a short, simple link. The site also provides no other features aside from shortening the URL. It does... ah... provide you with what appears to be a mnemonic device for remembering a URL. Thanks.
Customisation? No.
API? No.
Win: dwarfURL puts newly created URLs into an <a href> for a user to copy and paste as well as providing the regular old link. By entering a password, the site will also create a statistics page, which is just the shortened URL with the password added to the end.
Fail: DwarfURL provides a Firefox add-on, but according to its site, it doesn't yet work with Firefox 3. Some of the site's pages were also rather slow loading, which is usually a big deterrent when you're trying to quickly grab a short URL.
Bookmarking? Yes, in the form of a Firefox add-on.
Customisable? No, and the final URLs aren't exactly the shortest on the planet, given the relatively "long" domain name.
API? No.
Yes. Really
Fail: It has a LOLcat theme. No click tracking or stats of any kind. Your friends will think you're an idiot for shortening your URLs with a site called icanhaz.com.
Bookmarking? Incredibly, yes.
Customisation? No. And how could you improve on what you've already got?
API? What do you think?
Win: Not many, aside from statistics. Read on.
Fail: Tiny.cc takes users to an advertisement page before redirecting to the intended URL. There is a link on the page to go directly to the site, which you will want to click because Tiny's advertisements take quite a while to load. I am not sure why so many people use this one--and I certainly see people using it--when there are so many better options. They are also obviously milking their similarity to TinyURL's name, as can be seen by their title tag.
No one wants to watch a holding / advertising page whilst waiting for a different page to load.
Customisation? Yes.
API? Yes.
Win: It is noticeable how ugly a large number of these websites are, so I was pleased to come across one that's relatively easy on the eye. URLenco also lets users choose between a javascript redirect and a 302 redirect, which isn't going to mean much to your mum, but is somewhat explained in a "what's this?" pop-up.
Bookmarking? Yes: drag and drop, as per usual.
Customisation? No.
Win: Bit.ly has taken off in our industry to the extent that it pops up quite regularly for Twitter and Plurk links. It provides more features than most of the others and is currently one of my favourites. It remembers a user's last fifteen URLs and provides neat data about each one, including how many visits the URL received, where users came from by referrer, a snapshot of the page and a mirrored copy of the page just in case you have 20,000 Twitter followers and they call click on the link at once.
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Bit.ly also lets anyone access their data in JSON and XML formats and promises that they're working on new features as well.
Bookmarking? Yes.
Customisation? Yes.
API? Yes.
Win: Along with all the standard bells and whistles, PiURL allows its URLs to be further modified. Once you have created the shortened link, you can add file names / directories from within your site by adding /filename.html after the PiURL. This is one of the few services I've seen that allows this; to me, it seems like somewhat of a novelty (why not make a totally new URL?), but its a feature nonetheless.
Fail: Other than the ability to add filenames from within a website, PiURL doesn't do many things that set it apart from its competitors.
Bookmarking? Yes.
Customisation? Sort of. Users can add "tags" to their URLs that describe what the URL is about, but everyone is stuck with some random numbers / letters.
API? Yes.
Win: This URL shortener provides users with the ability to make money off of their clicks through advertising
Fail: This URL shortener provides users with the ability to make money off of their clicks through advertising. I mean, do you really want to be shown someone's ads when you click their links? Linkers can choose to show people an advertising page or a banner ad at the top of the page they've linked to. This will go over just fine with some less-techy people, but the Twitter crowd, with whom these shortening services are very popular, probably won't like it very much.
Bookmarking? No.
Customisation? No.
API? No, but it has a Facebook application, if you're interested.
Win: With a range of encryption options, TraceURL takes a small step ahead of the others. It provides a relatively standard statistics page, and the site can also be translated into German.
Win: Specifically designed for Twittered links, this site will save Twitter login information and post a link straight to Twitter on a user's behalf. In the battle to be the most effective service, Tweetburner's bookmark is undoubtedly more useful than its website. Being able to click the bookmark and send the current page's URL straight to Twitter is very efficient.
Bookmarking? Yes, and it's probably the most useful of Tweetburner's features/
Customisation? No.
API? Yes.
Finally, there are a number of other shortening services out there: what follows is a list of the other decent sites I came across but which offered similar things to the ones I already reviewed.
tnij.org - Polish
abbrr.com - Spanish
2big - German
My moral to all these great little stories is that it is worthwhile putting some thought into which URL shorteners are best for which situations. There are benefits and downsides to most of them, but there is likely a service that will do what is needed at any given time.
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