"and in this corner...." Battle of the URL Shorteners bit.ly vs. goo.gl

Image by bpedro via Flickr

I'll never forget the day a previous co-worker at my last job came up to me very excited about this tinyurl.com website he had found and how he was using it to share some sort of gaming links with his friends through email, but knowing that I like to keep up on what's new on the internet he wanted to share his findings (at that time I was 22 and twitter didn't quite exist, and social media was basically unheard of).

I researched tinyurl.com and it came in handy when I wanted to send a client an email with long links to product pages within the company website, it even gave me the ability to customize the end so it was easier to determine what link was for what. Eventually I found a better process, probably snagit or something and stopped using the tinyurl service.

Once I became the product manager for LabWrench (www.LabWrench.com) I started using bit.ly frequently as I had now also become an avid Tweeter, things were going well with the service I would login, create my links, post to twitter, get real time results and away I would go.....but then came GOOGLE!

Google got on board the url shortener train by releasing goo.gl and to be honest I haven't looked back. According to Google it has many advantages over other services, here is a quote from a Google announcement post:

"There are many shorteners out there with great features, so some people may wonder whether the world really needs yet another. As we said late last year, we built goo.gl with a focus on quality. With goo.gl, every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast, and it will keep working. You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you’re protected against malware, phishing and spam using the same industry-leading technology we use in search and other products. "

I love it because I can use the same goo.gl tracker across multiple platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and even the LabWrench newsletter. I then have real-time access to analytics from time of day they clicked, country, browser, and referring site.

If you're looking for a url shortner that provides security, quality analytics and built by the cream of the crop I suggest you start using goo.gl