A URL shortener is used to make a long and ugly looking Web addresses(URL- Uniform Resource Locator) shorter. URL shorteners are not new, they were introduced in the early of the last decade. Bot their popularity has increased a lot with the rise of social networking site Twitter. Because Twitter only allows maximum 140 characters in a single tweet.
Using URL shortening tools, people can fit more content and links in less space. If you want to shorten a long URL, here are six best URL shorteners for you.
List of Best URL Shorteners
1. Goo.gl: It is world’s most popular URL shortening website. Goo.gl is directly from Google and this is the main reason behind its popularity. Apart from that it also shows Shows real time click analytics on hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and all time basis. Most of the bloggers and webmasters use only Goo.gl to shorten their urls.
2. Su.pr: Another popular and widely used URL shortener. Su.pr is official URL shortener from Stumble upon. Like Goo.gl, it also comes with Real time analytics which shows how many people click on your links and out of them, how many came through Stumble Upon. Other advantages of Su.pr are- shows the number of retweets and reviews, suggest best posting time based on previous data, Sharing functionality etc.
3. Bitly: It is one of the oldest URL shortening service.Every month, Bitly shortens more than 1 billion links. It is our personal favorite. There are several advantages of using Bitly. Some of them are- real-time traffic & analytics data, available via browser extensions, mobile web, & numerous third-party tools and most importantly you can customize your link.
4. Ow.ly: Another leading URL shortener. It is from social media application known as HootSuite. Ow.ly provides deep analytics about clicks. If you are a HootSuite user, you can use it directly from your dashboard with a single click.
5. Shorte.st: This tool not only shorten the URLs but also help people to earn money. Like all other URL shortening tools, it also provides real time statistics. Other benefits are easy to use, simple interface etc.
6. Tinyurl.com: A handy tool to convert a long URL in to a short one. Tinyurl allows users to change a link name to a topic name. For example if you want to make short URL of a topic related to world’s best hosting, then the short URL will be look like http://tinyurl.com/besthosting, which is very SEO friendly.
7. is.gd: is.gd is a full featured, reliable and easy to use URL shortening tool. Unlike most of the URL shortening tools, is.gd is 100% ad free. The tool has been running since 2007.