It's one of the most widely used options out there, and you'll often find it integrated with lots of other services as well as third party apps like TweetDeck and TwitterFeed. Its popularity influenced the creation of at least 100 similar websites,[9] although most are simply domain alternatives. Configure short link HTTP status codes for best SEO results.
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. With that said, if you do need to track your URLs, or you want alternative ways to post there are plenty of ways to do it: Bit.ly: Probably the most popular URL shortener for Twitter because it was one of the first to let you track your tiny URLs. The links toolbar may not be visible in all setups and in most browsers, you can enable it in the View->Toolbars menu of your web browser. Undo Undo Shorten URL @ShortenURL 20 May 2011 More Revision 361: Increased max-version Thanks. It is reserved for campaigns using paid keywords.
Before the plain-text version of your campaign is sent, links will look something like this example. Browse our list for inspiration: You'll likely get some great ideas just look at what others have done! 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. Click the numbers next to each URL to view the contacts who clicked that link in your campaign.
How often do you get that kind of data from printed marketing? Whether you send out marketing emails or occasional newsletters, you can use Google Analytics to track the effectiveness of your emails. With this information, you should be able to judge if a site linking to your website is a valid site or not. Twitter even lets you schedule Tweets now ... sort of. For example, if a shell shortcut is created to link to a text document, the text document is the link source, and the shell shortcut is the link client.
To track owned media successfully you need to create Custom Tracking Links. As they say, barriers can boost creativity, so people have learned to be pretty witty with 280 characters, even inventing hashtags to make the whole process easier. It is where a link tracker tool comes in handy and will do the job that would take you forever to do. URLs that are shortened with the bitly service use the bit.ly domain or any other generic domain that the service offers.[citation needed]Information about any short bitly URL is available at (that is, the URL with a plus sign appended), for example .[8] This allows users to see and check the long URL before visiting it. Typically, it’s used for recording on-page JavaScript-controlled interactivity such as opening a widget or making an Ajax call.