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The Usefulness of URL Shorteners

While TinyURL has been around since 2002, it’s only since the increase in the popularity of Twitter that URL shorteners like TinyURL and bit.ly have seen their use skyrocket. Twitter, which only allows for 140 characters in any message, has made the service of taking a longer URL and transforming it into a manageable link quite valuable.

Twitter aside there are other reasons why URL shorteners are useful. For SEO purposes search engines consider the keywords used in the URL. However links that are too long and wordy are not easily categorized and hard to share with friends in emails and social media sites. URL shorteners make it easier to share links and some services like tinyarro.ws even let users choose their own keywords.

Bit.ly has received a lot of positive attention lately because of its ability to track and compile link data. This comprehensive information is invaluable, as knowing your customers’ interests and what other sites they are visiting can allow you to create more targeted content resulting in higher conversion rates.

Overall the best thing about URL shorteners is their ability to promote sharing. With the rise of texting, smartphones and Twitter, URL shorteners allow for more content to fit in less space, making sharing web content that much easier.

Mashable talks about the top five best reasons why URL shorteners are useful at http://mashable.com/2009/04/05/url-shorteners/

Tags: bit.ly, shorteners, tinyarro.ws, tinyurl, twitter, url shortner