Contents Purposes[edit] There are several reasons to use URL shortening. It is highly recommended to enable if you are using Google Analytics on your site. Once you click the share link, in addition to the social networking services you should see the URL of the video that can be copied and pasted anywhere. Linkrot[edit] The convenience offered by URL shortening also introduces potential problems, which have led to criticism of the use of these services. This way you don’t have to do all the copying and pasting in Bitly.com to get your shorter version.
It’s one of the earliest link shorteners out there and allows you to customize the actual shortened link (again, if the customization is not yet taken). How often do you get that kind of data from printed marketing?
DyingLinks gives you control over how long you want your shortened link to be available, along with some other control and privacy features. Failure to predict such problems with URL shorteners and investment in URL shortening companies may reflect a lack of due diligence.[26] Blocking and banning[edit] Some websites prevent short, redirected URLs from being posted.
If you copy and paste this script exactly as it appears here, your outbound clicks will appear in your Analytics Events reports with a Category of "outbound" and an Action of "click". (In the snippet, these are shown in bold.) You can use these values, or change them and define your own values. Once upon a time, the best link building campaigns involved using the same anchor text and quantity was more important than quality.
Not all protocols are capable of being shortened as of 2011, although protocols such as http, https, ftp, ftps, mailto, mms, rtmp, rtmpt, ed2k, pop, imap, nntp, news, ldap, gopher, dict and dns are being addressed by such services as URL Shortener. Publishers using the publisher interface can also generate tracking links using features similar to those available in this panel. Tinyarro.ws, and qoiob.com use Unicode characters to achieve the shortest URLs possible, since more condensed URLs are possible with a given number of characters compared to those using a standard Latin alphabet.[citation needed] Services may record inbound statistics, which may be viewed publicly by others.[5] Expiry and time-limited services[edit] Many providers of shortened URLs claim that they will "never expire" (there is always the implied small print: so long as we do not decide to discontinue this service—there is no contract to be breached by a free service, regardless of "promises"—and remain in business). For example: Bitly is one of the most popular link shortening services, and the one we prefer to use with CoSchedule. Such URLs are difficult to memorize, type-out or distribute. Consider alternate extensions: If your top choice isn't available, consider using a country code TLD (ccTLD) such as .to or .co. Real time link editing means a quick edit is all it takes to instantly shift customers to a new landing page. You can’t deny the usefulness of them with social media (especially Twitter) and the additional layer of analytics you can get on your links. So instead of seeing “bit.ly” or “goo.gl” links that might lead you anywhere, these websites have set up their own custom short domain name. Google Analytics does not track outbound links by default. The general idea people have about Google Analytics is that it tells you how many vistors and pageviews you are getting, where the traffic is coming from, and what content is popular on your website. You'll also get detailed statistics for every link when you sign up for an account, and you're paid via PayPal for payouts as low as $5. More » Bit.do Bit.do is another great alternative that's both simple and powerful. A short link which expires, or can be terminated, has some security advantages.