Findability, Social Media, Twitter, Usability.

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

Fortunately there are lots of 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


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

  1. is.gd, http://is.gd/LVK
  2. www.x.se, http://www.x.se/jpfv
  3. urlpass.com, http://urlPass.com/9n3
  4. yep.it, http://yep.it/10url
  5. xrl.us, http://xrl.us/urldesign
  6. jals.in, http://jals.in/urldesign
  7. thnlnk.com, http://thnlnk.com/onreact/urldesign/748


Number 1 – 4 are shorter than bit.ly and goo.gl, number 5 – 7 are 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.

Last updated: August 18th, 2010.

Related posts:

  1. URL Shortening Services with Statistics
  2. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
  3. 2009 is the Year of Meta-Social Media: 6 Services Compared
  4. 7 Services of SEO 2.0 Companies – Submit Your Site Now!
  5. Top 10 Social Media Sites + Lists [Meta-List]

July, 2008 | You can follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback.

This thing has 16 Comments

  1. Karsten
    Posted July 7, 2008 at 1:44 pm | Permalink

    http://www.twurl.nl

    directly supported by the twhirl twitter client

  2. onreact (641 comments.)
    Posted July 7, 2008 at 5:48 pm | Permalink

    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).

  3. Lid (21 comments.)
    Posted July 7, 2008 at 7:15 pm | Permalink

    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/

  4. Kathy (3 comments.)
    Posted July 7, 2008 at 10:10 pm | Permalink

    I didn’t know ANY of these existed! Thanks!

    Question: How does using these services affect SEO?

  5. Stefan (1 comments.)
    Posted July 8, 2008 at 11:18 am | Permalink

    Another simple service which also can password protect your links is:

    http://thinfi.com

  6. GP
    Posted July 18, 2008 at 12:16 am | Permalink

    A new short url service is takeme.to/short-url
    Very memorable address. Keywords only 1.99

  7. gilber
    Posted July 27, 2008 at 10:47 am | Permalink

    try this one 4url.cc

  8. prescottscott (1 comments.)
    Posted July 30, 2008 at 10:16 pm | Permalink

    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.

  9. serg (1 comments.)
    Posted August 28, 2008 at 4:50 pm | Permalink

    imho nice domain for tiny urls service http://uris.us/

  10. Matt (1 comments.)
    Posted December 4, 2008 at 1:11 am | Permalink

    If I can plug my own URL shortener I’d like to. urlShort at http://u.mavrev.com.

  11. mobob
    Posted December 4, 2008 at 1:22 pm | Permalink

    i2h.de outrules them all. It comes with the most advanced api for developers. http://www.i2h.de

  12. Eric Hwang (1 comments.)
    Posted April 16, 2009 at 5:12 am | Permalink

    It’s a great idea, especially when considering links for SEO.

  13. yash (1 comments.)
    Posted July 14, 2009 at 3:03 pm | Permalink

    Nice collection I’ll add one more

    http://jals.in

  14. Ben (1 comments.)
    Posted October 6, 2009 at 11:23 pm | Permalink

    This one works well – http://urlsnip.biz

  15. Tasos
    Posted October 7, 2009 at 9:53 am | Permalink

    Also check gourl.gr
    IT is very stable so far.

  16. John (1 comments.)
    Posted November 16, 2009 at 11:06 pm | Permalink

    “Generate Secure Short Links with Anonymous Referers, Anti-Bot Protection and Unique Thumbnail Previews.”

This thing has 2 Trackbacks

  1. Playfool® - Darren Richardson » Blog Archive » 10 Short URL Services
    Posted July 7, 2008 at 3:59 pm | Permalink

    [...] SEO 2.0 | TinyURL down? 10 Short URL Services that Are More Advanced Alternatives [...]

  2. Social Media Marketing Strategy | URL Redirection | Jesse Liebman
    Posted December 3, 2008 at 7:33 pm | Permalink

    [...] are a ton of short url services you probably have never heard of and a few popular short url services. Does it really matter which [...]

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