There are three major things that Bitly can offer to its users; to shorten, share and track links (URLS). What’s good about this tool is the capability to reduce to URL length. This makes it easier to share anywhere in the web.
Here are snapshot overviews from its website.
Shorten
Share
Track
Extra feature: Manage
How does Bitly work?
bitly works by issuing a “301 redirect”: a technique for making a webpage available under many URLs. When you shorten a link with bitly, you are redirecting a click from bitly to the destination URL. A 301 redirect is the most efficient and search engine-friendly method for webpage redirection, and is what bitly uses. Because bitly doesn’t re-use or modify links, we consider our redirects to be permanent.
Example:
Long link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=New+York+Penn+Station&daddr=9th+Ave+%26+14th+St,+New+York,+NY&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&dirflg=r&date=11%2F12%2F08&time=4:13pm&ttype=dep&noexp=0&noal=0&sort=&sll=40.746175,-73.998395&sspn=0.014468,0.036392&ie=UTF8&z=14
to:
http://bit.ly/CUjV
It’s much easier to include the link in an email or Twitter post without it breaking or taking up space. To see how many clicks that link has gotten and explore other info, simply append a plus sign to the end of the url:
http://bit.ly/CUjV+
