Before you move on, let me let you know that twitter blocks a lot of link shortening services and has since flag them negatively. And though it is unlikely that Bit.ly will be shut down, they are still a middleman. If you're comfortable with Web hosting and setting up simple PHP and mySQL applications, there are several free scripts you can use to set up a URL shortener on your own server, giving you much more control. Social media dashboard and notifications to gauge the impact of my social media marketing; alerts me to sudden changes in discussion volume and helps identify brand publicity issues. Distributed Link Tracking Server The distributed link tracking server runs on each domain controller in a domain. But if all the links to you use a shorter version, that sort of defeats the point!
As an example, their tracking system could have a macro for ad placement that you use to replace "AFF_SUB", and another macro for traffic source that you use to replace "SOURCE". The shortest possible long-term URLs were generated by NanoURL from December 2009 until about 2011, associated with the top-level .to (Tonga) domain, in the form , where xxxx represents a sequence of random numbers and letters.[15] On 14 December 2009 Google announced a service called Google URL Shortener at goo.gl, which originally was only available for use through Google products (such as Google Toolbar and FeedBurner) and extensions for Google Chrome.[17] On 21 December 2009, Google introduced a YouTube URL Shortener, youtu.be.[18] From September 2010 Google URL Shortener became available via a direct interface.
Create smart link targets to automatically route visitors by language or operating system so that we end up with engaged customers instead of bounces. In order to get the most out if this URL shortener you can integrate it with its parent service. So if your link is as long as a giraffes neck, coupled with the rest of the tweet, you will definitely find yourself truncating the text and even break the whole thing. This can result in URLs that are hundreds of characters long and that contain complex character patterns.
Then when the page loads, it can load the Javascript and track the information in Google Analytics as expected. Therefore, as a Twitter marketer who needs to track link performance, you should use bit.ly. You can also get a visual glimpse of your engagement for a different perspective.
But, as Matt Cutts says in this video, the page rank and anchor text will flow through the shortened link and that there shouldn’t be any harm in using them…as long as the URL shortener is using a 301 redirect. To enable outbound link tracking, you need to add a little javascript to your website, and add a little code with each outgoing link that you want to track. We sometimes experience products selling out suddenly in the middle of a large campaign. On that page, set Specify payout on click to "Enabled" and click Save once you're finished. Google displays a consent screen to the user, asking them to authorize your application to request some of their data. Privacy and security[edit] A short URL obscures the target address and can be used to redirect to an unexpected site. Perhaps, you can try improving your ad and then do A/B testing. This can be done online, at the web pages of a URL shortening service; to do it in batch or on demand may require the use of an API. TinyURL was used by early bloggers before many of these other services were around.