4 Url Shorteners You Should Never Use
Let’s face it, whether you love them or hate them, url shorteners are here to stay. However, all url shorteners are not created equal. The shortening service you choose to use can have a big impact on your site’s link building and rankings.
The problem with some of the services out there is that they don’t provide a clean 301 redirect to your content. 301 redirects tell search engines to permanently redirect to your content. Instead they provide a 302 redirect which tells search engines that this a temporary situation which causes a lot of issues with most search engines.
Even if you just use short urls on twitter which nofollows the links you post anyway, you still need to pick a url shortener that 301 redirects because once you post a link on twitter it can end up anywhere.
If your shortened url gets republished all over the web (and isn’t that the point) wouldn’t it be nice to get the credit?
Bellow are 4 sites you should never use because they do not provide a clean 301 redirect:
- twurl.nl – 303 redirect
- hex.io – 302 redirect
- eweri.com – 302 redirect
- fon.gs – 302 redirect
If you look around you will surely find more examples. (Please post any examples you find in the comment section) Also watch out for services that use a bar or frames to display ads etc. Besides being tacky they usually are not providing a clean redirect.
Good Examples: Each of these services provides a clean 301 redirect
- tinyurl.com
- bit.ly
- ff.im
- is.gd
In summary, make certain when you do use a url shortening service that you only use one that 301 redirects. When in doubt simply enter a shortened url in a header checker like http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp
Follow this simple advice and when your Twitter post hits the big time your content actually get the credit it deserves.
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I run such a service, http://URLSim.com that also correctly uses a 301 redirect.
Thanks for the info about thew SEM URL shortening sites. I would have never known about this technique or these bad servces.
I use HootSuite Owly URL shortener for Twitter because it keeps track of the clickthru’s and provides a lot of other great Twitter tools.
Does HootSuite do it ‘right’?
http://www.hootsuite.com
Tom
Hey Tom,
Yeah it looks like http://ow.ly urls from HootSuite are using 301 redirects. So you should be good to go.
Hey there! Interesting blog! I’m working with my friend in a small internet marketing business as a junior SEO analyst.
I enjoyed reading your post. Internet marketing is growing very fast in the IT industry. Internet marketing is now becoming a part-time business for many individuals.
You may find this research useful too
http://url-shorteners.public-website-status.com/
updated continuously
I read this with interest as I use some URL shortening software from willmaster.com which currently provides a 302 redirect. I forwarded a copy of this article to the author of the software who replied that he would schedule an update to give users the choice of opting between a 301 and a 302 redirect and explained the rationale for using a 302.
Will stated, “I intentionally chose 302 instead of 301 because I wanted the flexibility of changing the destination URL if things changed in the future. (Perhaps an affiliate program doesn’t work out, for example, and I want to redirect to different but similar one. Or I change my mind about the location of a download file, as another example.)
With 301, browsers and search engines that previously used the link would have the destination URL as fixed. With 302, those should notice the new destination when the link is used again.
With the URL shortener on your own domain, the link credit is never lost to a 3rd party service, even if 302 is used.
There are pros and cons for both permanent and temporary redirects. ”
I can now see that 302 redirects are not that ‘bad’, depending on how you use them. Obviously this is more of an issue if you are using someone else’s URL shortening service. However I strongly recommend checking out http://www.willmaster.com/software/goshorturlpro/index.php