5 Top Services to Shorten Links

URL-shortening tools have become very popular mostly because all of those social lifestream services we use daily. As far as I can tell, people will continue to use them to save space and time during web messaging or text messaging, or maybe to hide the URL itself. Anyhow, short URLs look better, neater and they simply work.

I'm not gonna list all the relevant tools that help you shrink a link in second. Believe me, the list is surprisingly long and most of them are doing pretty much the same.

Instead, I'll give you my top five list of tools that actually offer more benefits than just the shorten URL act.

bit.ly is a good choice of tool, if you're using Twitter. It allows you to create and customize a URL, and post it directly to twitter, which can come very handy. With this service you also have the ability to see where is the traffic coming from the links, conversations (twitter/friendfeed), and the history of the submitted links.

There is one thing in bit.ly that might be an issue for some people: the information is public, meaning, everyone can see any link history.

I've wrote about Cli.gs in the past. Since then, I've been using it and I'm very pleased with the statistics it offers me. In short, Cli.gs allows you to create short links and track their stats. Unlike bit.ly, none of this information is open to the public. Try to view someone else Cli.gs and this is what you'll see:

However, there is something in Cli.gs interface that requires refinement: the list format is not a good choice for analytical results. I'd suggest changing it to something that looks more like a table because it will be much more easier to read and follow.

I was very impressed by BudUrl. The service collects all your URLs together and give you a specific analysis about each and one of them in real-time, allows you to see which cities, states, and countries drive your traffic.

Click on the video to see the current features:

One the upcoming features you can expect to see are email trigger alerts for specific BudURLs when notification is critical. As well as weekly email reports of traffic summaries to keep you in the loop, RSS feeds of BudURL traffic, API for developers, and more.

ZI.MA allows you to use all its functions (except URLs editing) without the need to register. You can set temporary links and protect them with passwords, see your link statistics, customize URLs and more.

All the popular shared links from ZI.MA are gathered into one place. If the usage of ZI.MA increases, it can really turn into an interesting, collaborative, bookmarking site.

I actually think that Adjix is the most interesting service among all of these. Not only does Adjix create shorter links, but if you've logged into your free Linker account on the Adjix website you can also track exactly who has clicked on your links. Plus, you can earn revenue from Adjix ads, which run when your shortened link is clicked.

You also have the option to not have any ads associated with your link. Simply choose "No Ad" from the pop-up next to the "Shrink Link" button. The ad-free links are simple redirects to the destination Web site. But, Adjix will still collect click data for your ad-free links.

Additionally, you can shorten your links even further when every character counts, such as when sending a link via text message. Simply replace adjix.com with ad.vu;



I'll finish with a good Firefox plugin recommendation for those who need to shorten a URL fast. Try Spedr - it will make a shorter URL in just one click (literally), all from the URL line in your your browser.