What Link Shorteners Do (And Don’t Do) Link shorteners were originally created to address stubborn email systems that wrapped an email after 80 characters and broke any long URLs that might have been in the message. Use alternate extensions "hacks": Many country code extensions can be used to help form your company name by using the characters before and after the dot to form a shortened for similar sounding version of your name.
TweetDeck and Seesmic (TweetDeck’s direct competitor) both offer numerous URL-shortener options (bit.ly, is.gd, TinyURL, and twURL), but only bit.ly offers click tracking. An index of all object IDs is stored on the volume. It allows for custom domains so you can brand your shortened link. Hanselman was redirected through a convoluted path that used link shortening for analytics and tracking, and found the end result frustrating from a user standpoint. An example Turn this URL: X0DER&pf_rd_s=center-10&pf_rd_r=11EYKTN682A79T370AM3&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1270985982&pf_rd_i=B002Y27P3M into this TinyURL: Which one would you rather cut and paste into your browser?
However, Google Analytics can also provide you information about what users do when they come on your website, which banners or links they click the most, what product placements are working better on your website, which social media campaigns are bringing you more traffic, etc. Also, a custom domain might improve the amount of clicks your link receives. According to RadiumOne, URL shorteners that offer vanity domains can increase sharing up to 25 percent. With our unique CTID, you are much less dependent on cookies, and have more reliable data. This is a string of encrypted numbers and alphabets. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. To use custom campaigns, you add UTM parameters to your URL which are then recorded in your custom analytics report.
Instead, they create a “tracking link” that will act as a redirect to the actual landing page or website URL. See how that one event isn’t named correctly, so it shows as undefined? There are other methods of redirecting, but a 301 is the best choice if you are concerned about SEO. More » Ow.ly Another popular alternative, Ow.ly is a link shortener from the leading social media application known as HootSuite.
However, there are many instances where you or your publisher may want to keep track of additional information. You can also put it in your bookmarks instead of the links toolbar. First thing you need to do is install and activate the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin. Links shared on Twitter, including links shared in Direct Messages, will automatically be processed and shortened to an link. It works almost immediately and you can shorten as much as you want, anytime. This is a nice extra feature if branding is important to you or if you want to make your link easier to memorize. Undo Undo Shorten URL @ShortenURL 29 May 2011 More Statistics for Sunday, May 29, 2011 Thanks. For example, if you want to know how many people click on the website link in your Twitter profile, lots of people use a bit.ly link instead of the direct link to their website. There are a lot of options for shortening your links, and some even provide additional services like link bookmarking and analytics on your clicks. If you're comfortable with Web hosting and setting up simple PHP and mySQL applications, there are several free scripts you can use to set up a URL shortener on your own server, giving you much more control. The website is just as basic it was when it launched, but it does the deed.