Website links or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) plays a major role to take the user directly to the desired page of that website. Sometimes these links are very long and complex as many elements are added with these links. Many links can also have the structure of a website and it may occupy many pages. Sometimes the number of characters in the URL link may be as high as 100.
Top Rated URL Shorteners of November 2024
After the emergence of social media and other online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Spotify, these long links created a big problem for the users. That created the need for short links. There are many tools called website URL shortener designed to shorten the URL.
What is this URL shortener? What is the use of URL Shortener? Why create short URLs? In the coming sections of the article, we will be discussing all the details about URL shortener.
What is a URL shortener?
The URL shortener is a website that provides you a short link for your actual URL link. The URL shortener minimizes the length of the web address for easy tracking. Besides, the short URL is also easy to remember.
The URL shortening tool creates a connection between the short link and the original web address. By clicking on this newly created short URL or link the user automatically redirects to the original web page. Many online branded URL maker companies can provide free link shortenerservices, and help you get a short URL for your website page.
What is URL shortener used for?
There are many uses of URL shortener. Some of them include,
Shortening Long & Actual Address of a Webpage
This is the main objective of the URL shortener. A URL shortener, as the name suggests, shortens the long and complex URL of the webpage and provides a simple and easy shortcode in place of the original one. Shortening the URL is very helpful with apps like Twitter where the number of characters for a post is a big limiting factor.
URL shortening is also very useful where you are completing the post by adding the “Read More” button. A short URL is very easy to remember. Besides, it also helps in synchronizing with tracking activities of the webpage quickly.
Collecting Clicked Data Information
Sometimes these URL shorteners are used for tracking the number of clicks, time of clicks, and date of clicks for a particular URL. Besides, it helps in monitoring some other information like device type, regions, and language as done by Google analytics tools. It is also useful to track the incoming traffic for that web page with the help of available tools.
These data of clicks are very useful when you are analyzing the effectiveness of a particular webpage, especially in the case of social media posts. The content diverted traffic, duration of stay on a webpage, etc are some of the most important aspects of analyzing the social sites with the help of these short links of URL.
Replacing or Masking the Long URL with Short
Sometimes it is very easy to attract the audience by putting a short URL on any social media page like Facebook, or any other site in place of long and complex URLs. A post or a message with a long link URL with multiple unknown characters creates a feeling of distrust in the users’ minds.
Though it may also happen with the short link, however various online tools can help you to find the actual address behind the short URL and retrieve all the details of the original web page. Masking the long URL with a short URL has both positive and negative effects, it is up to you how you make use of the tool.
Why should you use URL Shorteners?
There are many benefits of using URL shortener especially on social media sites where the essence of the content you are sharing is very important. Some of them are:
Easy to Share
A URL shortener is very easy to share with anyone without losing important information like in the case of a long web address. In fact, sometimes we need to reduce the URL with a random combination of numbers and letters when sharing the long link of the webpage.
Makes an appealing URL
Shorten URLs attract the audience more than their long links. The users easily get convinced to click on the shorter links instead of longer links with many random characters.
AllowTraffic Monitoring
It is very useful in social media platforms where the sharing activities of your post, story, or tweet is monitored to record the traffic for a certain post for a specific period.
Final Thoughts
URL Shortener is a very effective application to make your webpage easily approachable. Besides, it also makes it easy to track traffic on that webpage. Moreover, the Short URL is very easy to remember. It is also very helpful in the case where the number of characters in a post is important.
There are many URL Shortner tools and apps available to create URL shortener. You can also use API to install the apps and run them on the system.
You should always remember that a short URL can also contain a harmful link. So, to build confidence in the audience you should ensure that the short URL that you are using contains the exact information that it commits to provide to its clients.
