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Top 5 Best URL Shorteners | Why Shorten A URL?

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You may want to know why you should use a URL shortener for your web address'? Why should you make your links shorter and why would you want to have them pointing to some other website? Where would you even have the need to use short URLs, and why would you need to use them there? I know that these may be just a few of the questions that are floating around in your head right now because I asked them to myself.

The simple concept behind a short URL is just that your link becomes much smaller. Thus making it less over all characters so that you have more room for your message, idea, or thought. The shortener web applications will take a URL that is 65 (more or less) characters long and shorten it down to about 20 or less. Some are a little more then 20 characters long when shortened, and others are less than the 20. Regardless of the exact size of your new URL, it is still much smaller then your original longer version.

Twitter is a great example for a reason to use short links. The most characters that a tweet can possibly contain is 140. So you are going to need to shorten up any long links so you can actually post content instead of just the long link. Using URL shortening web applications is not just great for Twitter, but is also excellent to track your marketing campaigns. I personally use them in many more ways then just one, and I use many of the best web link shortener websites in my opinion.

I have found that some of the URL shortening websites use tracking cookies with the new and smaller version. This is great way to see how many people actually click your links that you are tweeting about or that you have out there on any page.

A short URL is also a private or anonymous URL. If a person would want to see where the link leads to they would have to follow it or unshorten it with another web based application. Yes, it is possible to unshorten any short URL that you find. The website that I personally like to use is untiny.me. I like it so much because of the creative name that the web owners came up with. Un Tiny Me is in beta testing and is a great way to find out where people are sending you.

Here is the part of the post that you are all looking for. My top 5 favorite and best URL shortener websites that I use and recommend. 
  1. Bit.ly: This great web application provides a tweet client that is right on the main page. Just click share and then start tweeting your link then refresh your page and wait for your clicks to start rising through the roof. The tracking from this website is in real time.
  2. Ow.ly: This is another great URL shortener that you could use that also provides a way to track your links. The downside to this web application tracking feature is that it is not in real time. The upside is that you can use HootSuite which is a better tweet platform to send your tweets from. Not to mention that you can save your tweets and send them off at a later time. (This is not a feature that many people provide - let alone a URL shortening website)
  3. TinyUrl.com: As the name states - this website provides a tiny URL in trade for your long links. The name pretty much sums this one up. Currently, at the time of this post, there is no way to track your links that you shorten with this website. Not unless you shorten your link with bit.ly then re-shorten with tinyurl.com, but I do not see the effectiveness in that.
  4. Is.gd: These people have probably got the Url shortening business down to the least amount of characters possible. So if you just need to squeeze a few more characters out of your tweet then use this URL shortener and you will succeed. Please keep in mind that this website is extremely basic, but it is still a great service so I thought I would include it.
  5. Cli.gs: Yet another shortener that tracks your links clicks, and you can even post onto identi.ca.
I hope that this post has helped you to find a URL shortener that can suite your needs. If none of these web applications are what you are looking for then you may want to create one of your own. The internet is changing everyday and new applications pop up every single day, and who knows you could be creator of the next hottest trendy application. If you have a great URL shortener and you would like to see it listed on this blog then drop me an email via the feedback button to the left.

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