Top 5 URL Shorteners and How They Help You

Long URLs are simply hard to pass along. The links tend to sometimes break in email, are harder to verbalize in a conversation, and they are difficult, or in some cases near impossible to remember.

For example, let’s say you want to pass along this piece of news to your friends about how the ‘Iphone will test loyalty of cellular customers’- Which you can visit with this long URL…

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/04/24/loyalty/index.php?lsrc=mwrss

…which I will need to shorten to something more digestible.

Now, there are a plethora of URL shortening services out there - the majority of them free, but most of them not bringing anything unique to the table.  Here are some notable exceptions with useful value-added features in place:

#1 Choose your own page name with Doiop

doiop  

What Doiop allows you to do is actually define your own keyword (In this case I used loyalty) so you can give your short link some context, something simple which many URL shortening services just don’t offer.

Result: Link shortened to - http://doiop.com/loyalty

#2 Create instant short URLs using bookmarklets and enjoy previews with TinyURL

tinyurl

TinyURL is probably the most famous of all the URL shortening sites out there, but many people don’t take advantage of two key features they offer.  The first - Incorporating a one-click bookmarklet on your browser, so you never have to visit the site to shorten a URL, just click a button on your browser and it’s done!

The second is a preview feature.  This tells anyone who clicks on the preview link - what exactly they are accessing, so there are no surprises on the other end.

Result: Link shortened to http://tinyurl.com/2ck97a

#3 Tag short URLs using multiple keywords with ReadthisURL

 readthisurl

Just like Doiop, this allows you to add context to your shortened URLS but this time by allowing users to tag it with multiple keywords. 

Result: Link shortened to http://readthisurl.com/iphone+loyalty

#4 Create pronounceable with MemURL.com

memurl

Too lazy to think of a keyword but still want some form of coherence for your shortened URLs?  memURL will create a mnemonic link which is easy to pronounce (but doesn’t mean anything).  memURL also comes with a bookmarklet feature for one click shortening.

Result: Link shortened to http://memurl.com/luviru

#5 Track your short URL traffic and stats with dwarfURL.com

 

On top of a basic URL shortening system, DwarfURL allows users to track statistics and traffic of these shortened URLs.  Perfect for tracking how many people actually visit those links you send them :)

Result: Link shortened to http://dwarfurl.com/e9b5d

A word to the wise here - Like most good things on the Internet, spammers have invaded the URL shortening space -using these services to cover their tracks.  I would apply the same level of caution when clicking on the links - only doing so when you’re sure it comes from a trusted source.

What URL shortening services do you use?  Let us know in the comments!

[tags] url redirection, url shortener, tinyurl, domain [/tags]

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    • 37 Responses to 'Top 5 URL Shorteners and How They Help You'

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    1. eLearning Service » Blog Archive » The “tops” by the numbers said,

      on May 4th, 2007 at 12:54 am

      [...] Top 5 URL shorteners and how they help you From Friedbeef’s Tech blog [...]

    2. LcF said,

      on May 4th, 2007 at 5:15 am

      I use urlTea.com, it automatically copies the shorten URL into clipboard. urlTea supports bookmarklets and optional keywords

    3. James Yeang said,

      on May 4th, 2007 at 7:53 am

      Thanks for the tip LcF, I checked it out and urlTea is a very elegant solution indeed :)

    4. rob said,

      on May 4th, 2007 at 8:13 am

      I also like urlTea.com

    5. Ashish Mohta said,

      on May 4th, 2007 at 9:34 pm

      Cool find James. I will start using it now.

    6. Chris Reeder said,

      on May 5th, 2007 at 12:57 am

      QurlyQ.com

    7. papajoneh said,

      on May 5th, 2007 at 11:31 am

      Thanks James. cool gadget. I only use the tinyurl. never knew the others. thanks. checking LCF urltea.com too. thanks all. ;)

    8. ismail said,

      on May 8th, 2007 at 3:48 pm

      Hi there,

      landing to your page from malaysia bloggers forum.

      Nice article, very helpfully for newbie like me :)

      p/s: this article make me subscribed your rss :)

      cheers

    9. Adrian said,

      on May 15th, 2007 at 5:38 am

      Check out http://traceurl.com

      Traceurl.com does not only track and count accesses to your URLs, but also shows where the accesses came from.

    10. James Yeang said,

      on May 15th, 2007 at 8:51 am

      Adrian & Chris: Thanks for the tips- valuable info indeed
      PapaJoneh and ismail: glad to have helped :)

    11. Coach said,

      on May 30th, 2007 at 11:43 pm

      MULTIPLE SNIPPINGS
      Now you can snip many URLs in one go:

      SnipUrl.com

    12. gedax said,

      on May 31st, 2007 at 7:13 am

      hi,
      i suggest to use http://ix.lt

      FREE
      super SHORT
      NEW (all popular tags are available)

      enjoy

    13. Matt said,

      on June 3rd, 2007 at 3:57 am

      While they are usefull tools, they are spam enablers and I had to block all comments to sites I’ve worked for, that reference these services as spammers love them.

    14. James Yeang said,

      on June 3rd, 2007 at 8:32 am

      Coach & Gedax : thanks for the tips

      Matt:Yeah fully understand… I use those services to email long links to friends and have used them for print classifieds to advertise some property after I made a quick web page in Googlepages.com not so much for blogs

    15. Marcus Lam said,

      on June 13th, 2007 at 1:49 am

      As far i know, the shortest url redirection service is http://dn.vc and it feature like masking and keyword.

    16. Eric Hammond said,

      on June 15th, 2007 at 5:36 am

      I run http://notlong.com/ and have a review of a few of the bigger URL shortening sites (and links to many others) here: http://notlong.com/links/

    17. Sander said,

      on July 14th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

      i always use:
      http://www.kurl.us

      pretty fast and verry simple

    18. Tazza said,

      on September 29th, 2007 at 10:43 pm

      I recommend http://is.gd/ URL shortener.

      It’s fast and simple, and generates seriously short URLs.

    19. URL Shortening said,

      on September 30th, 2007 at 5:40 am

      I made http://lilurl.us

      It has stats, choosable names, and password protection. It’s free and has been around forever and likely will be as it costs zilch to maintain.

    20. GT said,

      on October 29th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

      I use http://xil.in

      It has a firefox search engine plug-in for easy creation of short URLs and supports custom tag features..http://xil.in/john

    21. tds said,

      on December 7th, 2007 at 3:55 am

      I recommend http://plexp.com. It has some original features.

    22. Anonymous said,

      on December 11th, 2007 at 11:04 pm

      http://www.bellypath.com/

    23. Joe said,

      on December 29th, 2007 at 5:31 am

      I use url-press.com one of the best I personally think.

    24. Costa said,

      on January 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 am

      Cool…

    25. Kyun said,

      on January 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

      I use fire.to. They have other good names to choose from.

      http://fire.to

    26. Mikkel Hansen said,

      on January 17th, 2008 at 6:01 am

      Another handy url shortener made with php and jQuery, also copies the short url to your clipboard: http://miklos.dk

    27. Joe said,

      on February 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

      Thanks for the info.

      I use http://www.url9.com

    28. Jaga said,

      on March 15th, 2008 at 9:31 am

      My best is smarturl.eu
      http://smarturl.eu
      ;)

    29. URL Shrinker said,

      on March 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am

      Another great option is http://qicute.com which is free, password-protected, saves your short urls, and lets you choose a special keyword or a random tag.

    30. juicyjugs said,

      on March 17th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

      Doiop is the best. Picking your keyword is great.

    31. Shorty said,

      on April 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

      I use yweb.com - nothing special (though they do hint at future extended features) but the domain itself is quite short (4 letters)
      Besides, since it’s quite new, their URLs still have only 2 digits, like http://yweb.com/9p (which goes to this page)

      Plus, I think the big guy with tattoos who crushes the URLs is funny. But maybe that’s just me.

    32. Ben said,

      on May 10th, 2008 at 5:50 am

      I like these two:
      http://urlsn.com
      http://www.snipurl.com

      The first has an API you can integrate with your website so user-submitted links are shortened.

    33. Jimmy said,

      on May 17th, 2008 at 7:03 pm

      I use http://gonext.org

      Free, ad-free, new (all tags avalaible)

    34. Kuki said,

      on May 30th, 2008 at 1:56 am

      best i ever used

    35. Kuki said,

      on May 30th, 2008 at 1:57 am

      http://smarturl.eu/
      forgot to paste link

    36. Julian said,

      on June 1st, 2008 at 1:11 am

      I always use xaddr.com. It has no frills, but users always see a preview page to find out where they are going before they click.

    37. nerodark said,

      on June 19th, 2008 at 7:25 am

      Another tiny URL site which allows you to use your own domains or sub domains.
      http://www.ellix.org

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