What to do when you need short URLs (concise Internet/Web addresses or URL forwarding) for Twitter or elsewhere? Either you use the proprietary
- t.co shortener by Twitter itself
- big Google’s URL shortener goo.gl
- or bit.ly where .ly stands for Libya
in most cases. bit.ly also allows you to use bitly.com, j.mp or your own domain to shorten links.
There are lots of other URL shortening services. I tested multiple of them and found out some alternatives.
Short URLs which are
- even shorter
- easier to remember
- make more sense fur human readers in the first place
Sadly over the years most of these services have been abused by spammers or hackers. Thus the list of recommended URL shorteners got shorter and shorter itself. Check out this list of short URL services. The first link is the homepage of the service, second is my example, I shortened this URL: http://seo2.0.onreact.com/top-10-fatal-url-design-mistakes
As you see some are shorter than bit.ly and goo.gl and one is more readable than t.co and goo.gl.
Feel free to add your favorite short URL to this list.
Also take note that there are some even better services offering statistics our there by now and best practice for business sites is to create your a short URL in your own domain using open source short URL scripts in PHP or the custom service by bit.ly.
Last updated: October 6th, 2011.
Related posts:
- hkcMjRm: How to Use Google as URL Shortener
- SEO 2.0 Basics: WordPress URL Design
- URL Shortening Services with Statistics
- Twitter Lists for SEO How to
- Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
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This thing has 17 Comments
http://www.twurl.nl
directly supported by the twhirl twitter client
Karsten: I tested Twurl but it doesn’t work here. I click “shorten it” and nothing happens. Also the font is unreadable without anti-aliasing (used on all systems before Vista).
I didn’t even know half of these existed – thanks!
I also came across this, which is a neat tool, not to be used the same way as above, but pretty cool nevertheless ;)
http://tinypaste.com/
I didn’t know ANY of these existed! Thanks!
Question: How does using these services affect SEO?
Another simple service which also can password protect your links is:
http://thinfi.com
A new short url service is takeme.to/short-url
Very memorable address. Keywords only 1.99
try this one 4url.cc
Very helpful post, really needed tinyurl today, but it was down. Need it for maps, etc for Arizona Real Estate work.
Thanks for the help.
imho nice domain for tiny urls service http://uris.us/
If I can plug my own URL shortener I’d like to. urlShort at http://u.mavrev.com.
i2h.de outrules them all. It comes with the most advanced api for developers. http://www.i2h.de
It’s a great idea, especially when considering links for SEO.
Nice collection I’ll add one more
http://jals.in
This one works well – http://urlsnip.biz
Also check gourl.gr
IT is very stable so far.
“Generate Secure Short Links with Anonymous Referers, Anti-Bot Protection and Unique Thumbnail Previews.”
http://u2s.in
A Very New short URL service with new functionality…
* Set number of times URL get accessed
* set expiry date for each URL
* make custom URL string
* get full of details reports of the url statistics
* auto delete can be set
* make very very long URL to too short
enjoy… u2s.in
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