The Benefits And Pitfalls of URL Shorteners
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.
Fail: Terrible for statistics obsessions. I sometimes wonder whether it's really healthy for SEO types, who are usually quite data-happy, to be allowed access to more RSS feeds and spreadsheets. But in all seriousness, there aren't many downsides to this one. The site provides a snapshot preview of the saved URL and I have an irrational hatred of snapshot preview, so I'll pick that as a downside. Not really convincing though, is it?
Bookmarking? Yes.
Customisation? You bet.
API? Yes.
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.
Bookmarking: No.
Customisation? No.
API? No.
Win: dwarfURL puts newly created ULRs into an 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.
Yes. Really
Wins: It appeals to the LOLcat crowd and, according to its homepage, does not spam ur email. Promise. It also dutifully does what it says it will, shortening URLs and even providing a "send straight to Twitter" link. Apostrophe freaks will notice the rather appalling apostrophe abuse that does not seem to be part of the LOLcat theme. Do notice, however, that said apostrophe abuse occurred whilst explaining how one can gain access to URLs in the future. It has a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page. I assume that one day, icanhaz.com will be 301ed to a payday loan site some SOMEONE is going to make millions.
Fails: 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?
Wins: Not many, aside from statistics. Read on.
Fails: 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.
Fail: The site advertises its ability to show usage stats, but the feature is currently disabled. On the plus side, they're cute about the reason: apparently, the stats "sucked." I always appreciate honestly in situations where that is a valid reason.
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.
Notice how the URL I put on Twitter had 81 visits, but that 41, 2, 2 and 1 don't add up to 81 on their own. This is because Bit.ly can't determine when a click comes from a third part Twitter client like TwitterFox or TwitBin.
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.
LinkBee.com
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.
Fail: I see a branding problem here in that people will likely use this solely for Twittered links, but given Twitter's scope and how much of the shortened URL market it takes up, that's probably not a massive problem. To check the stats of the URLs you create, you will need a Twitter account, as that is the only way to log in to the site. This is probably more of a problem than the branding question: some people are simply adverse to using Twitter, although we all know than anybody can be broken!
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.
rubyurl.com
tnij.org - Polish
abbrr.com - Spanish
fon.gs
2big - German
twurl.cc
Knol.me
Tr.im
Bloat.me
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.
www.seomoz.org
published @ September 11, 2008