A while back I wrote about TinyURL, a Web service that shortens a long Web address into something smaller, memorable, usable, and marketable. I wrote: “In a future post, I’ll talk about a TinyURL imitator that, as far as I can tell, has a distinct advantage versus TinyURL.”
I had no idea at the time how many services there were!
Mashable recently published a list of 89 URL shortening services. And my favorite, the one that I use, BudURL isn’t even on their list! (Makes me wonder how many more there are out there.)
I like BudURL (and there are others with the same functionality) because it tells me how many clickthroughs each URL generated. It also tells you when the clicks happen, where the referral came from, and the IP address and host (although, I’ll admit, I don’t know what to do with the IP address and host ~ comments/education welcome).
Adjix pays you to use their service (ten cents for every 1,000 impressions).
Read my earlier post to see some of the ways a URL shortening service can help you out.
I’m using http://tr.im
It provides some starts, number of click, when it was clicked, where it was clicked, they country the visitor is based it, etc.
It also allows the trimmed URL to be sent direct to twitter via a bookmarket.
Johns last blog post..The Lazy Blogger’s Guide to RSS Directories
Note that different tools use different techniques, some of which are not good for SEO. I blogged about this recently at http://tinyurl.com/tinyurl-seo.
Nice. My BudURL is one of the 307 redirects you tell us to avoid, Josh!
Which do you recommend?