Short URLs: The Pros and Cons - Should You Use Short URLs on Twitter, Facebook, and the Web?

Some explanation first. Short URLs are long URLs which have been shortened so they are fit quicker within a text message, Facebook update, or Tweet. In and also themselves there is certainly no problem with Short URLs, but you should think of the Pros and Cons before making use of them.

There are several logic behind why you may want or need to use a shortened URL. Should you choose a great deal of Tweets on Twitter you will almost want to use Short URLs should you relate to internet sites, recently Twitter initiated a car URL shortening function in their site. The reason being resulting from Twitter's limitation of 140 characters to get a Tweet, basically what you should have available should you be using a cell phone for texting. So, if you wish to placed in a URL into a website page and may include a bit of explanation you can easily go over that 140 characters. This is where shortening a URL is handy, it provides more room for comment. Also some longer URLs are certainly more than 140 characters long, especially URLs from sites using Dynamic content to create pages, including shopping sites and news services. Fortunately Twitter has information and links to URL shortening services to assist you accomplish this (a little more about these services later).

To give an example an average product link on Amazon or some other online sales site can contain 100 or maybe more characters, with 150 not being unknown. A URL of 120 characters in size would give you only 20 characters for comment should you use Twitter and even though you aren't it leaves you with a tough to remember URL.

The same URL shortened employing a top url shortener service on the net could contain 20 characters or less.

Many URL shortening services allow you to create custom shortcuts for the links to help you retain some name recognition. Custom shortcut names could be used, given that no one else is utilizing then you can definitely choose any shortcut that you would like. Typically these shortcuts would then end up being the name of the link, pursuing the name from the URL shortening service.

One other reason you may want to shorten a URL is for it to be more user-friendly and memorable. Within the examples above it may be much better to keep in mind shortened URL rather than the long one.

So, two very good reasons to utilize a URL shortening service, now lets have a look at a few of the downsides. You will need to weigh the pros and cons and consider your audience before you use a shortened URL. The largest disadvantage to URL shortening services is you are no more showing the actual URL. For instance during the examples over the long URL is obviously going where you say it is because the very path is displayed from the URL, in the second shortened URL it is not necessarily clear where the URL is pointing to.

This may lead to concerns with the audience as they simply cannot immediately tell where link is pointing. It could be pointing into the product when you claim, or it might be pointing into a malicious website instead. This is why I would recommend against simply clicking on shortened URLs from people or sites you don't know, this is a security risk. Should your audience is puzzled by whom you are you might lose clicks by using a shortened URL.