If you click the shortened link on bit.ly, you get access to detailed traffic information related to number of clicks, referring Web sites, and geographic locations of the users who clicked. In other words, www is arbitrary and no different than any other subdomain. To view the outgoing links, go to your Google Analytics account.
How Click Tracking Looks in Plain-Text Campaigns To track a click, the original URL has to be replaced with one that points to our servers and redirects to the destination URL. Instead, they create a “tracking link” that will act as a redirect to the actual landing page or website URL.
This method can create some clever domains and also have the advantage of using the domain extension itself as part of the word or words you're trying to convey. At that time, Google will completely disable the URL shortener and all associated data will be lost.
Shortcomings[edit] Short URLs often circumvent the intended use of top-level domains for indicating the country of origin; domain registration in many countries requires proof of physical presence within that country, although a redirected URL has no such guarantee. Tracking Search Traffic to the PDF Add a URL parameter to every link pointing to each PDF document on your site.
Get everything hooked up Some services, such as Bitly, let anyone create a vanity URL shortener. It is more focused on what happens once a visitor comes to your site.Email Tracking See who opens your emails, links, and attachments. 1 billion times.[12] Around that time, bit.ly and TinyURL were the most widely used URL-shortening services.[12] One service, tr.im, stopped generating short URLs in 2009, blaming a lack of revenue-generating mechanisms to cover costs and Twitter's default use of the bit.ly shortener, and questioning whether other shortening services could be profitable from URL shortening in the longer term.[13] It resumed for a time,[14] then closed. You can also put it in your bookmarks instead of the links toolbar. Reports are availabe in .csv format for use with Microsoft Excel or your favorite spreadsheet program. If you can't find a link here, try the Wikipedia list of TLDs. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. Even after labels are published and in the hands of customers. Like open tracking, it can help measure subscriber engagement. Bitly also offers a paid version, but it's pretty pricey. The trickiest part of tagging links in an email is coming up with a consistent naming convention for each variable. There are a lot of options for shortening your links, and some even provide additional services like link bookmarking and analytics on your clicks. Libya, for instance, exercised its control over the .ly domain in October 2010 to shut down vb.ly for violating Libyan pornography laws.