What URL Shortener Should I Use?

Update (8/10/09): tr.im is shutting down it's URL shortening service - see @Mashable post Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Update (3/10/09): Added 301 redirect criteria.

Update (3/20/09): Added Google Trends and Compete charts of URL shortener usage (includes cli.gs).

When I began using URL shorteners and analytics, tweetburner.com was the darling favorite. It provided an easy-to-use interface that integrated with the variety of browsers I used and it provided statistical reports that I found very useful.

But on December 12, 2008, Tweetburner began to break down. I tend to be loyal to a fault, but after two months and no real progress on fixing the problems that began on that fateful date, I realized I needed to move out of the tweetburner neighborhood into a more livable situation.

But which URL shortener? I wanted the features I had come to appreciate from tweetburner. I couldn't use tinyurl.com or is.gd because, as far as I could tell, there was no built-in tweet tracking tool for URLs shortened through these services. However, I included tinyurl.com in this analysis since it gets frequent use.

I noticed that recently some tweeters were using tr.im, so I began using that tool to see what kind of tweet data it provided. And on a webinar I was co-presenting with NWF's Danielle Brigida, she shared the two tools she was using and some of their features.

Because I didn't want to shift to just any tool, I decided to take the analytical approach and do a comparison. 

I developed the following chart of URL shortener features. The numbers in (parenthesis) are rankings that I applied to create a rating system to roll-up the values:

• scale: 0-5
• 0 = feature not applicable or not available 
• 1 = feature available, but not the best 
• 3 = feature works okay, not worst, not best 
• 5 = feature available with great performance 
• some features may be equally ranked

Feature	twurl.nl (via tweet- burner)	tr.im	bit.ly	poprl.com	tinyurl.com
Type of redirect	Not 301 (1)	301(5)	301 (5)	Not 301 (1)	301 (5)
Ease of use (1=poor; 5=excellent)	(5)	(3)	(5)	(3)	(3)
Length of shortened URL (including http://)	22 (2)	17 (5)	19 (4)	20 (3)	25 (1)
Daily Clickthrough Rate Rollup for Account	Displayed until problems began Dec 12, 2008. (1)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Visitor Activity Timeline Per Tweet	First 24 hours Last 24 hours and total (3)	First 72 hours (4)	Live, past day, past week, past month (4)	Total (1)	(0)
Visitor Locations Per Tweet	(0)	Country (3)	Country (4)	Country and state (5)	(0)
Visitor Referers, Browsers, Platforms, Per Tweet	Top 10 Referers (many in "Other or External Client" category) (2)	Known Referring, Browers, Platforms (4)	Known referring and subsections (5)	(0)	(0)
Most popular tweets	Ranking by most popular 5 tweets. Was working until December 12, but I referenced this feature regularly (5)	(0)	Numbers displayed through search feature (3)	Numbers displayed on account HP (3)	(0)
Conversations about URL	(0)	(0)	Twitter and Friendfeed reposts of URL (5)	(0)	(0)
Metadata about URL	(0)	(0)	Yes - keywords, description, tags (5)	(0)	(0)
Downloadable URL & clickhrough data	Can cut-and-paste output into spreadsheet (3)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Bookmarklet or drag to toolbar integration with browser	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE; includes a pop-up window for conversion & sending to twitter & friendfeed (4)	3 different bookmarklets; Integration with all browsers except IE (4)	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE (3)	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE (3)	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE (3)
Integration with social media tools	Twitter, Friendfeed (3)	Twitter (3)	Twitter, email, Gmail, Facebook (4)	Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Tumblr (5)	(0)
Ability to share stats with others	tweetburner/ links/URL (3)	tr.im/ statistics/URL (3)	bit.ly/ info/URL; can designate account public; RSS feed of stats (5)	poprl.com/ stats/URL (3)	(0)
Login	Separate (but recommends same as Twitter and Friendfeed) (3)	twitter or Identi.ca (4)	bit.ly (with opportunity to submit twitter login info) (2)	twitter (3)	(0)
TOTAL RANK	(35)	(38)	(59)	(30)	(12)

Notes on above features

• Type of redirect. Google recommends URL shorteners use a 301 redirect. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

• Ease of Use. When shortening a URL, I prefer to have a pop-up window with the shortened URL in a text box which is ready to be populated with 140 characters then tweeted. Having a separate pop-up box allows me to toggle back and forth between the content I want to tweet and the tweet input box so I compare what I plan to post with the actual post. Only tweetburner.com provides this time-saving feature. But bit.ly carries the title of the post over to a new tab - which allows me to toggle between tabs. That works for me, too.

• Length of Shortened URL. Because you only have 140 characters to tweet with, the shorter the URL the better. 

• Daily Clickthrough Rate Rollup for Account. This was a feature tweetburner offered which stopped publishing on December 12. What I really liked about this was seeing how my daily clickthrough rates grew over time and then doing a comparison of my daily clickthroughs against my daily tweets and a comparison of my daily clickthroughs against follower growth. Can't get that in any other tool. If other tools adopt this chart, I recommend it be calculated based on the tweeter's standard time zone rather than the application's (tweetburner used The Netherlands time zone).

• Visitor Activity Timeline Per Tweet. Generally most of your clickthroughs occur shortly after the post of your tweet - but it is useful to see the long tail of the clickthroughs and which of your stories have a thicker or longer tail of clickthroughs than others.

• Visitor Locations Per Tweet. Okay, poprl.com wins in this category hands down because it not only breaks down clickthroughs by country, it goes further to break down the large U.S. group into states. Wonder if there could be a breakdown by top cities also? Hard to say as it depends on how they gather this data ... Definitely something the other apps should consider.

• Visitor Referers, Platforms, Browsers Per Tweet. Identifies where clickthroughs happen on your tweets - twitter.com, search.twitter.com, Tweetdeck, RSS feed aggregator, Email, etc. and on what platforms. No consistency in what is important to display here but bit.ly wins in this category because it allows you to see where clickthroughs happened in subsections within the different clients.

• Most Popular Tweets. Tweetburner.com used to offer a table of the tweets  that were clicked on most often in individual acounts. With the other tools you have to "eyeball" it. Having said that, poprl.com does feature the most clicked URLs for all accounts on it's home page.

• Conversations about URL. Bit.ly wins this category because it is the ONLY tool that includes this feature - a list of all the retweets or redistribution of the link 

• Metadata about URL. Data about the source URL gathered from both the source and external services. Bit.ly is the only tool that offers this information.

• Bookmarklet or drag to toolbar integration with browsers. tr.im offers three different bookmarklets which offer different behaviors. Tweetburner.com integrated with all the browsers I use - Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox - except for Internet Explorer. But given that I used Internet Explorer less than the others and the separate pop-up window was a major positive feature of the tool, I was willing to deal with this incongruity. But I noticed this behavior towards IE in the other tools as well and wondered if it was an IE configuration issue - played around with configuration a bit but didn't find resolution. Then I saw this explanation on the tinyurl.com website: 

For some users, such as some recent IE 6 installations, the clicking and dragging of links that contain javascript is no longer supported. To add this to your IE links toolbar, click the link with your right mouse button and select "Add to Favorites..." from the menu. Click OK if a security warning alert pops-up (this shows up since the link contains javscript). If a list of folders is not shown, click the "Create in >>>" button. Now select the folder called "Links" and then click OK. You should now see the TinyURL on your links toolbar... 

• Integration with social media tools. The existence of URL shorteners came out of the need to have such a tool for use with twitter. Integration with additional social media tools is icing on the cake.

• Ability to share stats with others. One of the important aspects of social media is the ability to learn from others. Being able to view other people's statistics can give you an understanding of what makes a successful tweet.

• Login. With what do you login? Many used (or encouraged use of) the same login credentials as twitter.

Last words on the issue:

• Poprl.com received a 2007 Webby Award.

• Google Trends comparison of these tools.

• Just as I was finishing up this piece, I came across the following article from July 22, 2008, "The Bit.ly Interview: "No Comment" on Twitter URL Switch and Yes, They Have a Business Plan" . . . which made me believe that bit.ly has something planned with twitter.com that hasn't been announced yet.

Comparison Charts

Update: 3/20/2009 - I ran a comparison of the URL shorteners identified here but replaced http://tinyurl.com with http://cli.gs (which has a strong fan base). Note that http://tinyurl.com DOMINATES the market because of the length of time and integration in the market.

Google Trends

Compete (live data)

So, does this information influence your choice of a URL shortener?

What information is missing?

What criteria do you use to select a URL shortener? 

Comments

[Jeffrey levy]

Thanks for this extremely useful review! I've been using tweetburner for months, but have recurring problems, and now I know how much more bit.ly offers.

[Elaine Talbert]

If you are in an organisation that has web filtering, you may find that some of these URL shorteners are blocked since they are categorised as a possible way to create an anonymiser or proxy link.

Hope this adds to the discussion.

[Urs E. Gattiker]

I like this comparison but I have discovered:

I like Adjix very much indeed - user friendly and VERY short :-)

http://commetrics.com/articles/best-100-twitter-tools/#comment-1370

So another one to add to your list please, thanks for this really nice review

@ComMetrics

[Laura Lee Dooley]

Thanks for the feedback - I know there are MANY URL shorteners available with different flavors.

I selected the ones that are prominently used by those who are followed by http://twitter.com/worldresources and http://twitter.com/lauraleedooley.

Beth Kanter (http://twitter.com/kanter) recently asked for URL shortener information and her followers pointed her to this useful article - http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/01/11-best-url-shortening-services-vote-your-favorite/.

I will explore adjix further to see what I can learn about this tool. Thanks for the recommendation!

[Paul Adamson]

Thanks Laura found this a helpful starting point having launched fresh faced into the colourful void that is twitter.com.

[Jonathan]

I personally use http://z.pe . It's the shortest.

[Victoria Pacchiana]

Just found this great tool, too bad it's paid! Still, it'll be interesting to see the direction URL shortners take...

http://totally.awe.sm/?

[Laura Lee Dooley]

It is interesting that Twitter quietly decided to standardize on the URL shortner bit.ly last week - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_crowns_bitly_as_the_king_of_short_links_he.php