What is a Bit.ly link? How does Google deal with it?

[MrFewkes]

Im looking for ways of getting more links to boost my google rankings(as always) and joined twitter today after reading something in here about a page which got a boost in rank after tweeting it on twitter.

I am confused though.

Whats all this bit.ly with codes after it?

In my mind - google follows links which have http://www...... etc in a href statement in html.

DNS servers resolve the url to an IP and there you go - the website.

Then though - we have this bit.ly

If I (can I) put a full link in my tweet which I want people to go to - and also I want google to see my full link in tweets.

You can probably see by my post here that I am confused.

Shortened URL? Whats all that and how does google know what its pointing at?

What should I put in my tweet to give me a google boost?

Cheers

[edited by: tedster at 8:51 pm (utc) on Dec 2, 2010]
[edit reason] make example url visible [/edit]

[tedster]

bit.ly is a proper domain name - because .ly is the ccTLD for Libya. Also, you don't need the "www" hostname for a domain name to resolve.

As a business, bit.ly records your long URL and creates a short alphanumeric URL, handy for those 140 character limits on Twitter. You can post the link and bit.ly will 301 redirect a request for it to your original address. They also make stats publicly available for how many clicks it gets. Just put any bit.ly link in your browser's location bar and add a plus sign (+) at the end.

goo.gl is a similar shortening service owned by Google. Since the government of Greenland is thought to be friendlier than Libya, some feel that their goo.gl links will be more dependable into the future than a bit.ly link might be.

You still can post a full link into Twitter and have it work without a 301 redirect. But you usually don't have many characters left to say anything else, then.

[MrFewkes]

Ok - I will give my url a go without the short thing. I think g will like that more - although exactly how (in detail) is at this point beyond me.

I think now that I get it a bit more - my question would be

Does google give the target of the bit.ly reference as much of a boost as it would a direct reference to a URL. If that makes sense - I think it does. (this is assuming it gives either type any boost at all anyway.)

Hey - I dont want to say much more than "Great site www......" anyway. And of course to do the reverse to my competitors - "Rip off site www......." so the tweet space isnt a worry.

[tedster]

Matt Cutts tells us that cross-domain 301s "usually" lose a little of their power (up to 15%).

Are bit.ly 301s different? Who knows, it could be. I think the value of a bit.ly link will grow mostly as people click on it or retweet it. Even more if "influencers" and "authroities" click or share.