Best URL Shortening Service to track click-thrus?

The best URL shortening service to track click-throughs is any one that you own and control yourself.

To put it mildly, it's not sensible at all to rely on the continued availability, goodwill, reliability and changeable terms of service of any third-party URL-shortening service.

There were a few hundred Warriors here last year who would have told you the same (and in fact did) when all their Tinyurl links suddenly disappeared overnight.

And if anyone tells you that "bit.ly's not going anywhere", and "has good customer service", just invite them to read this recent post on Ben Metcalfe's blog: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog.

For $5 you can go to Fiverr and have someone install your own on your own hosting, even if you don't know how to do it yourself. Be in control of your own business and not dependent on unnecessary third-party services you can't control!

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SteveJohnson

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

The best URL shortening service to track click-throughs is any one that you own and control yourself.

To put it mildly, it's not sensible at all to rely on the continued availability, goodwill, reliability and changeable terms of service of any third-party URL-shortening service.

There were a few hundred Warriors here last year who would have told you the same (and in fact did) when all their Tinyurl links suddenly disappeared overnight.

And if anyone tells you that "bit.ly's not going anywhere", and "has good customer service", just invite them to read this recent post on Ben Metcalfe's blog: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog.

For $5 you can go to Fiverr and have someone install your own on your own hosting, even if you don't know how to do it yourself. Be in control of your own business and not dependent on unnecessary third-party services you can't control!

Wish I could hit the thank-you button multiple times for this. I can't, so I'll quote and repeat it

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Bane

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

The best URL shortening service to track click-throughs is any one that you own and control yourself.

To put it mildly, it's not sensible at all to rely on the continued availability, goodwill, reliability and changeable terms of service of any third-party URL-shortening service.

There were a few hundred Warriors here last year who would have told you the same (and in fact did) when all their Tinyurl links suddenly disappeared overnight.

And if anyone tells you that "bit.ly's not going anywhere", and "has good customer service", just invite them to read this recent post on Ben Metcalfe's blog: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog.

For $5 you can go to Fiverr and have someone install your own on your own hosting, even if you don't know how to do it yourself. Be in control of your own business and not dependent on unnecessary third-party services you can't control!

This!

But if in doubt you can always use mine

arseh.at

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Eager2SEO

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

The best URL shortening service to track click-throughs is any one that you own and control yourself.

To put it mildly, it's not sensible at all to rely on the continued availability, goodwill, reliability and changeable terms of service of any third-party URL-shortening service.

There were a few hundred Warriors here last year who would have told you the same (and in fact did) when all their Tinyurl links suddenly disappeared overnight.

And if anyone tells you that "bit.ly's not going anywhere", and "has good customer service", just invite them to read this recent post on Ben Metcalfe's blog: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog.

For $5 you can go to Fiverr and have someone install your own on your own hosting, even if you don't know how to do it yourself. Be in control of your own business and not dependent on unnecessary third-party services you can't control!

Alexa is right. It takes about 20 lines of code to write a pretty decent url shortener/tracker. You can even buy a cheap .info or whatever to put the requests thru that domain. I have mine set up so:

Code:

http://mydomainname/[one digit code]/<Amazon ASIN>

redirects to amazon with my tag.

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jamjar919

13 years ago

I use goo.gl

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Roy Penrod 13 years ago

The best URL shortening service to track click-throughs is any one that you own and control yourself.

You preach it, girl!

Seriously, why would you want to put all of your links under someone else's control? That's just crazy to me.

Roy
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Janice Sperry

13 years ago

EasyLinkManager that I mentioned earlier IS on your own domain. All the ugly and pretty links are in your own MySQL database and no one else controls or has access to them.