I quit using tinyurl, bitly, etc. -- will this boost my traffic?

[Mike Johnson]

I love the url shorteners...and their acceptance as valid links has increased with the spread of twitter.

But, I stopped using these services...or so it seems.

Adjix allows you to use your own domain as a url shortener: http://web.adjix.com/AdjixDNS.html

Now, I use a subdomain to redirect links. For example, my website is at http://www.vexxt.com - I have created a subdomain at http://go.vexxt.com that will work like tinyurl, bitly, or any of the other url shorteners.

Now there may be others that work the same, but adjix is what I found and use. I originally experimented with it because it allows some simple link tracking (and for those so inclined, you can use an ad supported page to earn money-although it doesn't seem like it's worth it).

As for setting it up, it was a simple tweak through cpanel.

Now, here's the question: Am I getting any google boost by using my own subdomain? or is this ancillary traffic seen as completely separate since it's on a subdomain?

[azlanhussain]

Hmmm good question.. I've never thought of this before.. but one thing for sure I did noticed a difference in the number of traffic coming in between normal link and sub-domain link.. never though of analyzing it though..

[Scott Woodside]

I don't know how it can not boost your traffic. If anything else, it makes you look more credible.

[Kim Standerline]

I know this doesn't answer your question as such, but I dislike those link cloakers anyway, they smack of affiliate links etc (to me anyway)

This is a much more civilised way of cloaking your links, www.freelinkcloaker.com/ and best of all, it's free

Cheers
Kim

[madison_avenue]

To me these tinyurls always look odd and unnatural hinting at affiliate connotations. Domain forwarding is the best method. Have a special domain registered like redirect.com to act as the middle man your affiliate links, you can use it for all of them whatever the original domain.

[NewbiesDiary]

I was using offto for a while, but with vista my links show up as a really bad site & my browser wont allow access to them - a couple of days ago I found a neat little program (will have to go find it for y'all) it cloaks and creates a page with the forwarding doovy encrypted - it's pretty neat.

When its not the middle of the night, I'll go find it for you - it's shareware or freeware or some such thing!

[Tim Dixon]

Originally Posted by Mike Johnson

Now, here's the question: Am I getting any google boost by using my own subdomain? or is this ancillary traffic seen as completely separate since it's on a subdomain?

How do mean Google boost? - do you mean does it help pages rank higher, get you some PR or something else?

Tim

[robocallaghan]

I got fed up with running out of space in twitter even with the tiny urls services, so I created my own short url service -> a.gd <- : Amendable Short URL Service - Its in beta and open to everyone.

Rob.

[nicelife]

I use the Free Link Cloaker and it works very good.

It's a bit risky to use services like bit.ly and tinurl because of the lack of control you have over your links and what if they suddenly shut down?

I have several hundreds of affiliate links on quite a big variety of web properties out there and I wouldn't want to start recloaking them if all of the sudden they stop working, that's a lot of work and will also result in income loss.

That's why I use software hosted on my own server!

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by nicelife

It's a bit risky to use services like bit.ly and tinurl because of the lack of control you have over your links and what if they suddenly shut down?

That's putting it mildly.

But quite often when you try to discuss this with people, they're very dismissive of it and say "Bit.ly and tinyurl aren't going anywhere". Well, tinyurl very nearly did, last year. It's shortsighted indeed to rely on unnecessary services outside your own control. (Not to mention that it looks highly unprofessional!).

[nicelife]

Yeah I guess it's putting it mildly, it's in fact very dangerous.

I don't think that's to hard to see really. I guess when the day comes and one of these cloaking services shut down there will be a lot less affiliate commissions paid out to people for quite some time, but not for me LOL :-P

[nicelife]

That's the exact format I have on my URL's to, the Free Link Cloaker works exactly like that. I had to make a few changes to get the 'go' in the URL because the default is "recommends", but it worked out fine :-)