Recently there has been a lot of hype about URL Shortening. I guess some URL Shortening services even offer tracking stats. But, doesn't adding one more level of look-up to the original URL affect page ranking in any way? Just curious to know.
+4
A:
It might, right now, but I wouldn't expect that to last for too long. SEO and PageRank are subjects where a lot of guesswork is passed off as wisdom.
If you're that obsessively worried about your PageRank, here's what you do. Take that energy, and put it into creating content that people want to link to. You'll get better results.
People buy stuff. Robots don't.
Kalium
2009-04-08 06:45:54
people buy more stuff from web pages that are on top of their search results.
Jimmy
2009-04-08 06:51:41
@Jimmy PageRank doesn't respond much to obsessing over it.
Kalium
2009-04-08 06:56:04
I don't know why you were voted down. I've invest _a lot_ of time on SEO for one client's website and at the end of the day the biggest boost simply comes from increasing your quality inbound links. That only comes legitimately from good content, not tricks.
rcampbell
2009-04-08 08:54:39
@rrc7cz I do. Some people don't like to hear that their tricks aren't really going to help them significantly.
Kalium
2009-04-08 16:47:56
A:
AFAIK Short urls dont have any effect on your PR. Using long urls as links can improve your PR because they have a direct link. But short urls just server the purpose of making your url short. Nothing more than that. This is helpful in sites like twitter where you have a limit of 140 chars.
Shoban
2009-04-08 06:47:02
+11
A:
IT depends upon the implementation from the URL shortener service. If they use HTTP 301 and/ or HTTP 302 in their redirects then Google are quite good in interpreting these correctly in accordance to Page Rank. However other parameters might be affected by URL shortening.
Most Search Engines uses anchor text and URL texts as a parameter to what to give hits for for a specific URL. And if the URL changes from http://example.com/some-article-about-C to http://example.com/234432 then obviously the first one carries more information for the search engine which will make it perform better for "article" and "c"...
Thomas Hansen
2009-04-08 06:58:48
+3
A:
Well, I can tell you one thing that won't affect your PageRank - URL shorteners using DNS.
The vast majority of URL shorteners use clientside redirection - either via scripting/meta-refresh, or via frames. Those might affect your ranking as they change what Google sees - you never know. Examples are anything from Dot.tk to PopNIC, Smartdots, JoyNIC, HomeNIC, EuropNIC, Tipdots, DuoNIC, UnoNIC, Cydots, FreeNIC, Mediadots, Ulimit, kurzURL, co.nr and de.be/de.vu/ch.vu.
A few services are using proper DNS for forwarding, though. Those include Afraid.org, co.cc, No-ip and Da.ru. This is fully transparent to visitors and spiders, so you can be sure it doesn't affect your rank.
+1
A:
The criticisms of URL shortening have reached near hysteria. Combine this with SEO guidance that borders on superstition if not outright voodoo and you'll find a lot of (mis)information out there. URL shortening is a storm in a teacup. Don't expect it to make any difference to search engines.
cletus
2009-06-17 14:07:07