What is a URL shortener

A URL shortener is an online application that allows the user to enter a full URL for any specific web page, click on a button, and automatically shortens a long wordy URL to a short domain name and uses a 5 or 6 character code. When users are clicking on that short links they are redirected to the original URLs just as if they had entered or clicked on that.

Where URL Shorteners are useful

First, it’s very useful for micro bloggers, such as Twitter users, who like to share URLs in their posts. However, with a 140-character limit on sites like Twitter, it’s often difficult to include a lengthy URL along with an explanation of why you’re sharing it.   Second, URL shorteners are useful because they can preserve a link to a specific web page even if the URL to that page changes in the future.  Third, some URL shorteners allow you to track the number of clicks your shortened link gets allowing you to analyze the type of traffic you’re generating to your website, blog, etc. from your links on Twitter, Facebook, and so on. This allows you to understand in greater detail where your promotional efforts are having the biggest impact.

This is also certainly true for marketers using social media channels to reach out. shorteners are useful in internet, email and mobile marketing.  In email marketing marketing you may have text wrapping on long URLs in text e-mails and also benefit from tracking clicks. On mobile the little space available simply calls for short URLs.

http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url

• Sharing functionality remains the focal point of the Ow.ly social bar. This feature will keep your eyes on prize content and allow you to share easily and frequently.
• Slimmer and non-obtrusive.
• Bookmarking of links that you have retweeted.

http://bit.ly/

• Sharing functionality.
• History Viewer.
• Advance Tools, side bar bookmarklet, developer tools.
• Good to build traffic

http://is.gd/

• Shorten web addresses for emails, forum posts, blogs etc. which cannot handle long URLs and might wrap them, making them unclickable
• Lower the character count when texting web addresses to a mobile phone
• Hide the real URLs of affiliate links from visitors to your site
• Obscure your real email address from bots which harvest them to spam.
• Circumvent protections on sites which don’t allow direct links to a competitor’s site (if you are violating a site’s terms you do so at your own risk)
• Clean up bookmarks for social bookmarking sites or sites with low character limits like Twitter
• If you dislike a website and have to mention it (e.g. when complaining about it), link via is.gd so that your link does not help the site’s search engine positioning

http://cli.gs/cligs/new

• Statistics
• Permanent redirects

http://www.adjix.com/WebObjects/Adjix.woa/

• Earn revenue sharing your links
• Link data available
• White Label – Use your own domain name for shortened links

http://budurl.com/

• Shrink any URL into a short BudURL
• Inbound links redirect with a 307 for maximum SEO performance
• Organize all of your BudURLs into a single account
• Add notes to each BudURL to keep track of where you place it (ex: Twitter profile link, LinkedIn comment, Email signature, banner advertisement, etc.)
• Watch your Click Stream to see real-time click activity including the referrer, IP Address, Network, etc.
• Create custom BudURL vanity aliases like budurl.com/mylink
• Edit destination URL
• Reset click values
• Delete BudURLs
• Unique Visits per click
• Download click traffic
• See the keywords used to find your BudURL

http://tinyurl.com/

• Browser toolbar
• Control your alias by providing a custom one
• URL Redirection
• Hide Affiliate URLs
• Preview Feature

http://www.snipurl.com/

• Nip many URLs at once
• Attach a private key for protection
• Has an API to create shortened URL’s in your browser.

http://blinky.me/

• Segmentation  functionality with every link shared.
• Get piles of additional data about the people who click the links.

http://su.pr/  (my personal favorite)

• More traffic -- Every Su.pr URL exposes content to StumbleUpon's nearly 8 million users and allows publishers to showcase their site's best content alongside each link.
• Better results in less time -- Publishers can identify the optimal times to post (highest likely traffic) and schedule as many posts as they like, for whenever they want.
• One-click posting - With Su.pr, publishers can post to StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook with just one click. (More platforms to be added in the future).
• Real-time Analytics - Su.pr provides real-time reports on clicks and traffic, including the number of retweets for each post.
• Custom short URLs - Su.pr users have the option to have their own domain-name in the short URLs (i.e. mysite.com/a2b).
• Redirect friendly -- Publishers can choose to create links that redirect traffic to their own site (301 redirect), preserving their search ranking.

Bonus:

Gain More Traffic for Blog Using Tweetmeme and Su.pr

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