Short URL addresses have changed the way we share links on the internet. Short URLs have their advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is having a link that is easier to share so that more people will remember the link and less of a chance of it being wrongly written. A Short URL can also be useful if you have a limited space to write, for example, in Twitter where the limit is 140 characters. Also, in an email, a short URL isn’t as error prone to having breaks in it than a longer URL.

However there are also disadvantages for short URLs, since you cannot see the end link of a short URL, you can be led to spam or shock sites. However their are solutions to this problem, having a preview link, so that the user knows the end link. Another problem is that if the URL service crashes then all the links registered with that service don’t work.

In this blog post I’ll be outlining my favourite and the most common short URL services and deciding which is the best.

TinyURL

Probably the most common truncator service around. TinyURL has common features such as an easily remembered domain, fairly short URLs, preview link, custom alias and a bookmarklet. TinyURL says it has around 154 million URLs in its database, this doesn’t allow them to have the shortest link (6 characters).

TinyURL is also prone to crashing, since it is the post popular service on the web it receives over 1.5 billion hits a month, this can lead it to get overloaded and crash, meaning your links don’t work.

There are also many features that TinyURL does not have, such as statistics on your URL, being able to register account to keep track of your links and choosing whether a URL is public or private but overall it does the job well.

is.gd

The main drawing card to is.gd is that it creates one of the shortest links. is.gd can create a URL that is only 7 characters (including punctuation). However like TinyURL is.gd lacks a few features, customisation, stats etc.

One feature of is.gd I really like is their bookmarklet for Firefox. This is a little button that sits in the Firefox toolbar, click it and it automatically shortens the link of the page that you are currently on and copies the new shortened link to the clipboard. So with one click you have your short URL ready to be pasted anywhere.

bit.ly

This shortener service boasts features that most sites don’t have. You can to sign up to an account so that you can track all your links, view information for each link, number of clicks etc. It also has common features such as a bookmarklet, easily remembered name and an option for a custom alias.

I really like this service as it combines features and simplicity equally so that the user can have the best experience.

Google Short Links

This is my favourite service and the one I use most often. What I love about Google Short Links is the ability to have your domain in the URL. For example instead of the short URL being tinyurl.com/1234 it is instead ant.geek.nz/1234. This is great for me because when someone sees the short URL they are curious and visit the parent URL (ant.geek.nz) which generates traffic for this blog! Great huh? Other than this Google Short Links has other great features such as statistics for each link, a bookmarklet and an option whether to make the link private or public.

This service is available with Google Labs for Google Apps.

Lenks

Developed and coded by Rowan, Lenks offers features that no other short URL services offer. For example, huge customisation options when you sign up and the ability to put your links in various folders, humour, informational etc. Lenks also gives you the ability to view other Lenk user links via their profile. With AJAX fast speed Lenks is definitely a short URL service to start using.

Of course Lenks has features common to all short URL services. Overall I highly recommend this service!

The Winner

My favourite short URL service is Google Short Links. I love this service as it is used by only me on my domain. It may not have as many features as other services but the features it does have majorly outweigh the features that are missing. Since this is a Google Labs project we can expect to see many more features to come.

Runnerups are Lenks and is.gd. What I love about Lenks is that it is feature rich. It has a lot of features that most truncate services don’t have. Lenks is still in beta so we can expect to see more great things. On the other side is is.gd, a very simple URL truncator, the stand out feature for me is the one click URL shortener feature, this makes it so easy to post a short link. I hope that other services take after is.gd in this regard.

So there we have it! Of course I only reviewed a sample of short URL services, there are many more avaliable for you to test out!

Have fun linking!

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