Get all the handy power of a link in a much smaller package, right? And if I was using Twitter.com to Tweet as I sometimes do, then I wouldn’t use one, I’d just let Twitter shorten it. But otherwise, the free account is useful enough for comprehensive link tracking. Simply enter your long URL and click the Shorten button. Sometimes a short URL is useful simply to give someone over a telephone conversation for a one-off access or file download, and no longer needed within a couple of minutes. You can use this service with or without an account.
This total includes clicks on other occurrences of this link on this module. TinyURL: This shortener use to be all over the internet; however, lately it has died down.
To quote John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising: So which half of your advertising is a waste of money? Scott Hanselman wrote a short but interesting post tracing the amount of redirection that happened on a single shortened link. This may sometimes be done using short, CAPTCHA-protected URLs, but this is not common.[3] Makers of URL shorteners usually register domain names with less popular or esoteric Top-level domains in order to achieve a short URL and a catchy name, often using domain hacks.
To track owned media successfully you need to create Custom Tracking Links. Every access requires more requests (at least one more DNS lookup, though it may be cached, and one more HTTP/HTTPS request), thereby increasing latency, the time taken to access the page, and also the risk of failure, since the shortening service may become unavailable. Twitter.com: The truth is that the best URL shortener for Twitter is the one that’s built into Twitter.
You can’t deny the usefulness of them with social media (especially Twitter) and the additional layer of analytics you can get on your links. It’s a free platform for scheduling and managing Tweets, like Tweetdeck. Reports are availabe in .csv format for use with Microsoft Excel or your favorite spreadsheet program. We’ll use the GA Event tracking feature to capture all the information.