Link metrics, fast and easy
eriksr on July 28th, 2008
Dear Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb,
Thank you so much for your article about bit.ly. If I ever meet you in person I’m going to give you cookies and maybe flowers.
And you might want to do the same. Let me explain.
What is Bit.ly?
Bit.ly is a URL shortener similar to TinyURL. Unlike TinyURL however, bit.ly gives you access to metrics.
Why should I care?
Let me answer this with a common scenario.
Let’s say your client or company is about to launch a new site, or has created a new sub-page, and you want to let people know about it.
A shortened URL is a lot easier for people to read and understand.
Now let’s say you want to make this URL a link. And you want to track how many people click your link.
Traditionally you would use a unique referral ID appended to a link. So you end up with something like this:
- http://mydomain.com/tracking.php?ref=abc&destination=1
- http://mydomain.com/tracking.php?ref=abc&destination=2
Looks simple enough, doesn’t it? But in my experience, co-ordinating with your client’s (or own) IT/webmasters to get a referral ID process set up is painful and time-consuming.
And that’s where Bit.ly really shines. Because, with Bit.ly, you can track how many people click your link without involving IT.
Bit.ly has a long memory
The first time you use Bit.ly for a pitch, you do so to shorten your URL. The second time you use it — after the pitch has been sent — you simply enter that shortened URL to see how many people have clicked your link.
Easy, eh?
But, even better, bit.ly remembers the last 15 times you used the service. So if you are putting together a report for a release that went out last month, say, and you want to know the number of clicks your link generated, all you have to do is surf over to Bit.ly.
Of course (and life just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?) you can forego the surfing and access this information via an RSS feed.
So where can I use Bit.ly?
Of course, since you’re using Bit.ly’s shortened URL and not the actual URL, you wouldn’t want to use this in a press release, for example (just think of the library of dead links you would have if Bit.ly were to fail). So save it for items with a short life span. Like a pitch. Or an email campaign. And any short effort where you want to know how many people are clicking your link(s).
Pitfall: Privacy and cookie cleaning
But great as Bit.ly is, there are two pitfalls.
First, the metrics about your shortened URL are not private. Anyone can replace the unique part of the info screen URL (the bolded part — http://bit.ly/info.php?id=ikWtm) with a code from someone else to see their click-through rates. So be aware of this if you don’t want to share metrics (or if you want to see someone else’s).
Second, if you don’t accept cookies, or if you clear your cache, then you won’t get historical information from bit.ly. Be aware of that if you are relying on them to generate client reports complete with click through metrics.
