Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So - what is the impact of all of this? Obviously my (mostly useless) keyword link went away. TinyURL, Ping, Myspace are all trying to get domain juice from the links. What real benefit do they expect to get? Just a few more links everyday to their domain?
Is there any benefit to this besides more links to a domain?
So - what is the impact of all of this? Obviously my (mostly useless) keyword link went away.
When it comes to search, it has a major impact as the keyword is no longer present.
TinyURL, Ping, Myspace are all trying to get domain juice from the links. What real benefit do they expect to get? Just a few more links everyday to their domain?
TinyURL is on its way out after losing to bit.ly as Twitter's new default URI Shortener. Since I'm active in SM daily and have my own URI Shortening app, I see what every single one of them are doing. Some will frame the destination, those are the ones that many are avoiding now. Others do the right thing with a proper 301 and metrics to boot.
Thing is, they are becoming a dime a dozen. If you are serious about your brand and have a shorter domain, you'll create your own URI Shorts or change the structure of your site to accommodate shorter URIs with 30 or less characters (that includes http://example.com/).
Is there any benefit to this besides more links to a domain?
I believe the benefit is shrinking each day that passes. The 4th popular shortening service was hacked last week...
The Cligs hack, which was detected by researchers at SophosLabs over the weekend, edited approximately 2.2 million Cligs URLs.
Personally? I don't click on many shortened URIs these days unless I can see them expanded. With Twitter, I can use their search interface and app features that allow me to see the expanded URI.
Public URI Shorteners are a risky proposition. They are becoming less and less trusted as each hack occurs. The one's who survive this mess will be those that have been accepted by the communities as being trusted. TinyURL used to be one of them. Then they had some downtime issues and Twitter cut them off just like that. I don't think there was any formal agreement between them either.
If you're serious about your online presence, you'll create your own shortening routine. Remember, 30 characters appears to be the magic number with Twitter. At character 30, "visual" truncation occurs. And can you believe Twits are so "not with it" that they will cut and paste the truncation and not follow the link to verify it is working. I see it daily.
If I were a search quality engineer, I'd have a special algo just for URI Shorts. To me, they are volatile, disposable and recyclable. Short life spans and open to abuse once they are archived. That only applies to those using a proper 301. Many are doing other things and distorting the redirect chain in the process. That's where the benefits come in for the bottom feeding services. ;)
If you're serious about your online presence, you'll create your own shortening routine. Remember, 30 characters appears to be the magic number with Twitter. At character 30, "visual" truncation occurs. And can you believe Twits are so "not with it" that they will cut and paste the truncation and not follow the link to verify it is working. I see it daily.
@pageoneresults so how does one do that?
