Online world is run by links. Every page, site redirects one to an other page using links. Links have become so important that people usually try to describe the content of the topic in the link thereby making these links longer.

The question that arises is that – “is it beneficial to have such long links?”

I would say not much, and the reason why i say this is because the disadvantages outweigh the advantages of having them.

Having said these let me introduce the concept of short URLS

As quoted by Wikipedia URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator(URL) may be made substantially shorter in length. This involves using an HTTP redirection a domain name that is short to link to a web page which has a long Uniform Resource Locator.

Going a step further let me discuss about the Uniform Resource Locator shortening services available on the internet.

The Google URL shortener:

It is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. This service gives a very good insight on the traffic resource providing further information under various categories such as the country from where the URL was clicked, the browsers in which the link was clicked etc.

Features:

Goo.gl short URLs are randomly generated, and the mappings of short to long URLs are publicly accessible.

Additionally, the mappings are: Immutable – once created by you, no one else can change them Irrevocable – once created, they do not expire. Note, however, that Google reserves the right to remove any goo.gl short URL, for example for spam, security or legal reasons

How to Use Google’s URL Shortener:

Go to goo.gl Copy and past your long URL on to Google’s URL shortener. Click the “Shorten” button. Copy the shortened URL and use it for your campaigns on social media sites /micro blogging sites (e.g. Twitter, Google Buzz). Review your shortened URL’s click statistics.

Why should we shorten the URL:

1) Making it SEO Navigation friendly and have better indexing: SEO tools prefer short URL to efficiently index the page in the search engines. The search engines index the hierarchy of the URL to a certain level, after which they drop the extended URL.

2) Avoid URL warp: Descriptive attributes in the URL to represent information may result in a URL that is aesthetically unpleasant and difficult to remember. Copying a URL that is hundreds of characters long can make the URL garbled.

3) Make it micro-blogging friendly: The micro blogging sites such Twitter and also some instant-messaging services have a total character limit to messages. Using a URL shortener can enable users to include a URL that may otherwise not fit.

Some other URL shortening services are:

tinyurl.com

bit.ly.

These services provide human-readable URLS

So next time whenever you write a new post, article keep the URL as short as possible

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