Link shorteners are an easy way to send a long URL in a compact form. With the rise in popularity of Twitter, Facebook and any other communication medium where space is at a premium, there are now many link shortening domains out there. There is an excellent article by Search Engine Land that reviews most popular online shortening services and gives you an overview of pros and cons for each. Want even more URL shorteners? Here’s a Mashable list of over 90 popular online services to satisfy all needs and tastes.
Potential Problem
Along with the convenience of a shorter link they also mask where the link is actually coming from, which spammers find advantageous. This makes them very appealing to spammers, who don’t want their domains visible and their email blocked by ISPs or email blockers.
If you use a shortener in your emails be sure it is not one that is widely used by spammers, which could make your email more likely to be blocked by ISPs. The list of blacklisted link shorteners will be an ever-changing one as spammers move to counteract the blocking of their spam and the ISPs respond to the situation. As this changes, your ISP will blacklist according to the usage by spammers, which, if you have used the same shortener, means your email will be blocked too. Overall, the convenience of using a shortener can be destroyed by your email being blocked.
Solution
If it isn’t necessary to use a shortener in your email, e.g. if you have the space, resist the urge to reduce your links and lose the fear of your emails being blocked. So send an HTML email, rather than plain text, and link your long URLs to either appropriate text or images.
While you are writing your email/newsletter, try and put yourself in your recipients shoes. What goes through your mind when you see a shortened link? Don’t you think before you click: where’s this taking me? If in doubt, you probably don’t click, likewise your shortener may not get the click that you want. Visibility may be better than a cloaked URL.
If you still want to use a shortener, if you are technically savvy enough – you can install a link-shortening script on your own domain. You need to come up with an available domain and register it. Here are some examples and reviews of such scripts along with brief notes on how they will work:
http://www.teknobites.com/2009/04/16/10-free-scripts-to-create-your-own-url-shortening-service/
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/7-open-source-and-free-url-shortener-scripts-to-create-your-own/
Now it’s over to you. Do you use a link shortener in your email campaigns or social media posts and which ones do you use? Please do share your thoughts below!
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