Url link shortening services

Of course  the reason for this is a better looking  url and  shorter message for Twitter’s limit of 140 characters tweets.   Another advantage is also link cloaking, encoding or encrypting,  which in case of an affiliate link,  can not be substituted with another ID  number to steal your commission. The disadvantage however, is that the person clicking on the shorter link does not know where it will go to, risking to be taken to "undesirable" sites. 

Supporting the increasing demand,  a lot of shortening services started to appear on the internet that would take your long url and give you a shorter version of it.

There are many url shortening services available and they all have different features and benefits for the end user.   The most basic free services will only provide you with the shortening option,   others however will also include statistics to provide you with additional information to view if someone is clicking on your links.  This is useful as a marketing  tool to analyse and track information you posted on Twitter or Facebook,  and  to see if people actually read what you write about.

One important feature to look for is to know if the shortening services uses 301 redirects,  which is the most search engine friendly and forces the search engines to look at destination url and not the domain of the shortening service itself.   The 301 redirects stands for a permanent move instead of temporary.   This tells the search engines who sends the url,  and you want it to be your domain name instead of the shortening services address.   This will increase traffic to your website instead of the shortening services website.

Another important feature to look for is to be able to customise your shorter url and be able to use your business name in the link you created.   This makes it visible to the customers and it is great for branding.

http://bit.ly/ – Free to use shortening service which includes all stats and allows to track link performance in real time.  It is Twitter's default shortening service, instant update to your Twitter, Facebook, other accounts including Gmail. It offers many extra tools, plug-ins such as a browser bookmark and sidebar. 

http://budurl.com/ – Free to use shortening service which allows you to view stats of your clicks in real time. Also provide 3 pay levels from $4.00 a month to $49.00 a month and includes 21 day free trial on paid service.

http://cli.gs/ – Free to use shortening service which includes all stats,  instant update to your Twitter account with one click, can be used for other social media as well.  You are able to use your business name in the link you created.

http://www.expandmyurl.com/ – Free to use shortening service which includes basic stats, includes business name in the link you created.

http://go2.me/ – a link shortening service which also includes a chat window to exchange comments with your readers.  Instantly updates to Twitter, Facebook or email with one click.

http://hootsuite.com/ – Free features offered within its Toolbox, which also include url link shortening services by using ow.ly.     

http://mytwittertoolbar.com/ - Free to use,  includes a variety of url shorteners as well as more than 50 Twitter tools & Twitter tips.  Offers basic stats to see how many people clicked on your links.

http://short.ie/ – link shortening service which allows you to connect to your Twitter account, customize,  share your list between other accounts or users and keeps all of your links in one place.

http://tr.im/ – link shortening services , instant update to your Twitter account,  you need to register to use stats.   Variety of tools and extensions,  such as Firefox extension that allows you to view stats and update links quickly.

http://tweetburner.com/ - basic shortening service which allows instant update to your Twitter account & other social medias as well.  Only basic stats tracking included to see how many people clicked on your links.

http://www.twitclicks.com/ – basic shortening service which includes all stats with details showing percentage and locations where the clicks come from.  Allows instant update to your Twitter account.

http://www.twitpwr.com/ – Free to use basic shortening service which also includes analytics and stats,  allows instant update to your Twitter account & other social medias as well.