Bit.ly It is a free service, with which you can shorten long URLs. The company is based in New York and was founded by Peter Stern in 2008.
General information
At 46% of usage, the bit-ly URL shortener is currently the market leader in this field and has recently surpassed its competitor Tinyurl.com. Responsible for this jump was the message from Twitter that bit.ly was now the default service for shortening long Internet addresses. At the same time, Twitter constitutes the central background for the appearance of URL shorteners, since a tweet cannot be more than 280 characters. Every character counts and every character in a URL counts as well. Google+ profiles are typically characterized by long lines of numbers and can be shortened with a URL shortener.
Bit.ly uses certain algorithms to convert a long link to a short one. Based on the hash codes, a short link is created that clearly refers by a URI to the respective Internet address. The long link is reduced to a short link, so the URL is an intermediate step that is assigned to the director to a single URL. Users can see only the short link, but not the URI.
Features
Links can be shortened without registering with bit.ly, but they will only be available for a certain period of time and click statistics will not be provided either. Thus, if you need to find out about user behavior, you need to register before shortening a link. Once you have determined a bit-ly profile, you can shorten the first link. Basically copy the URL, place it in the search field of the bit.ly web portal and click on "Shorten". A much shorter URL will then be displayed, which can be copied and used with a single click on "copy".
Its operation is relatively simple. Bit.ly saves the link entered and links it to a newly created short link. If you now click on the short link, you will be redirected to the stored Internet address. Bit.ly counts clicks and displays statistics that can be viewed on demand. But as already mentioned, these are only available if you have signed up first. Bit.ly also offers the option of entering spoken URLs. The hash code at the end of a URL can be freely chosen. You can use letters and numbers. A link to a fictitious document called "Example" would look like this:
bit.ly/Example
To see the click statistics in real time, you must go to the address bit.ly/info/Example. Recently, more features were introduced, such as the "bitmark" bookmarking service and an iPhone application.
Bit.ly and SEO
Using bit.ly it is not recommended in all cases, since any abbreviated link initially goes to a bit.ly server and from there to the real Internet address. Unlike users, a crawler does not reach the landing page, but the bit.ly servers. And users take a detour to get to the URL that has been shortened by bit.ly. In the field of SEO such redirects should be treated with caution, since part of the link juice of the original links can be lost. Google claims, however, that not much link power is lost through the use of short URL link services. [1] . It is necessary to choose if a certain link should be crawled and indexed or if it is important to highlight shortening a particular link in individual cases.
Web Links
