Shrink or Shortening the URLs is getting popular day by day because of the mini blogging concept. You have to adjust your text in the minimum length, that’s why people have to use such services which shrink their URL and creates a very short URL link. Once you open that tiny URL, you are automatically redirected to the original URL. The best services so far was from TinyURL.com and it got a huge fame. TinyURL is considered to be as a pioneer in this service. Now due to the high demand everyone is looking to open such service and try to short the URL the most they can. Ok, here I am going to tell you 23 such websites which offer the short url creation service. You simple put in the long url and it will trim your URL into a short tiny lenght URL.
I am not going to rank them as no.1 or no.2. I am simply listing all of them with a little features of them. But yes, the first one that I am going to share is quite impressive one.
- A.GD
Yes! That’s it! http://a.gd is the shortest domain I have ever seen on the Internet. And most amazingly, this shortest URL itself is providing us the service to create short/shrink/trim URL service. OK, the interesting thing is, I think this is the same service which http://w3t.org/ and http://krz.ch/ are also using. So, what I think is it is some standard script, which all these three websites are using, or may be these all are the same company’s websites.
- BIT.LY
http://bit.ly is a services which was specially made to trim the URLs for Twitter. It also give you a custom name option, which helps you to create a memorable URL. For instance if you are creating a short URL to https://pickmore.com/category/microsoft you can make it something like http://bit.ly/pmicro. Advantage! that you can easily remember even the short URL 🙂
- TR.IM
Another quite short domain which allows you to create short/shrunk and trimmed URLs. http://tr.im domain itself shows that it is going to trim your URL. Tr.im is also designed for helping out the mini blogging especially Twitter. Trim also provides you the same facility as bit.ly to customize the URL name which you can easily remember later on too.
- TinyURL.com
Not to forget the pioneer in this short URL creation the very famous TinyURL.com. http://tinyurl.com is considered to be as the first service of its kind. It was started back in year 2002 and is shortening the URLs since that time. Before the introduction of Twitter, no one cared for short URLs thing but now its getting fame day by day and TinyURL is the biggest one so far with million or URLs trimmed and shortened.
- IS.GD
The domain says itself that yes “IS GOOD”. You create a short URL and it IS GOOD. http://is.gd is another service providing the users to shrink the URLs. Is.GD is showing the number of URLs shortened so far and when I was writing this article the numbers were “7,460,528 URLs shortened so far”. This website also shows that how much in percentage the original URL was compressed.
- TO.LY
A very simply and clean website. No ads or disturbing text on the website. http://to.ly is pure and very clean. You simply put your long URL in it and it will give you the short URL.
- Tiny.CC
The URL of the website is telling everything that it will shrink your website’s or link’s long URL into a tiny URL. http://tiny.cc is also providing the custom link service so that you can easily remember the short URL too.
- XR.com
Quite a short domain and amazingly its with the extension or .com. http://xr.com is a website which create short URLs for your long URLs. XR stands for Xtreme Redirects and yes it is providing us the good service. XR is also giving the custom URL feature.
- CLI.GS
Cligs says that their service is for “Short URLs with Analytics, Geo Targeting, Social Media Monitoring”. http://cli.gs is good and shorten your URLs from long lengthy URLs. If you have not signed up with Cli.gs you will not be able to see the statistics for the short URL that you generated. If you just simply go and try to shorten your lengthy long URL it is annoying. You will be asked to first pass through the captcha to verify that you are not a bot and you are a human, and then later you can shorten your URL. But to be honest, I tried without signing up with them and I was unsuccessful in creating a short URL. So, my conclusion is “WTF?”
- urlBorg.com
Interesting service but waste. Why shall I signup or login to my openID or Google Account to use the service? http://urlBorg.com looks good with outlook but when I tried to shorten the URL it asked me to login to my Google Account because they are fighting against spammers. Sorry dude! I’m not using your service because its to hectic and why would I even trust you for that? The website just got up a year ago in Feb 2008, so I’m not going to risk my Google account to login to your service. Thanks!
- SHORT.ie
Domain looks quite simple and explains everything itself (at least not like CLIGS which makes no sense to me). http://short.ie is quite simply site, put your long URL and get short URL, that’s it! On the other hand they also provide you the facility to signup with them for free and create a community of yours. You can track the clicks and can also link your account with Twitter.
- KL.AM
Ok, may be the domain makes some sense in some other language but not in English at least. You can shorten your URL using http://kl.am and if you signup with them you can track the number of clicks on your URLs. It also provides the custom name service for URL for easy memorable links. If you can find from where to customise the link, please click the “kustomize” link 🙂 Yes that’s a little tricky.
- RLY.CC
When I saw this service, it made me think why is he even offering such a nice service? http://rly.cc website is so clean, black theme and got totally no ads on it. So from where is this guy earning money to run this website? Beside this the theme of the website is black and urls and stuff is visible with white and yellow text on blackish background. But there is one little back-draw. You cant find any button (like Submit, Shorten, Go, OK, etc.) to click and shorten the URL. You only can press the ENTER (return) button on your keyboard.
- TINI.US
Domain name tells the nature of the service. You can create short small URLs by using http://tini.us. OK, one more thing that I kind of liked in this website is its funky look. The service is very new so the random link that it generates is quite short. One more thing that this website offers is multiple domains. You can select whether you like a short URL with tini.us, poourl.com or justlink.us domain. Another interesting thing but I’m still not able to fully understand it is the “Type” of compression for URL. It has different options like Normal, Super, etc. I think if you select the super option, it will use extreme compression and will create the shortest URL possible. And yes it also has the custom name feature too.
- W3T.org
The domain is totally irrelevant with the service it provides. http://w3t.org is using the same script that A.GD is using or may be it also belongs to the same company, I’m not sure about it.
- KRZ.CH
The outlook of the service is same as A.GD and W3T.org. http://krz.ch is not in English language but you can easily understand the outlook because of its simplicity. I don’t know Czech Republic language may be it is in Czech language, I’m not sure about it but the domain .ch belongs to Czech Republic.
- CHLIP.IT
It is also a good service to shorten the big, long and lengthy URLs into small URLs. http://chlip.it also provides you the statistics for your short URL. Simply put “s.” before your shortened URL to see the statistics. For instance your shortened URL is http://chilp.it/?6f7d71 then simply to see the statistics of it use http://s.chilp.it/?6f7d7
- POPrl.com
The domain sounds like “popular” or may be “pop url”, I’m not sure about it that after what sound they kept the name poprl. http://poprl.com is a mixed service which provides a short URL service in addition to it, it also rank your shortened URL just like digg. Most clicked URLs get on the first page. So, if you like to expand your website links and get more clicks then this is quite a good social media kind of service.
- URLShort.com
Very simply and ad-free website. No mess. Very Clean and easy, user-friendly interface. In http://urlshort.com simply put your long URLs and get a shorter one. The site is new so at the time of my writing this article only 581 URLs were trimmed so far.
- SnipURL.com
Its simple but a little complex at the same time. http://snipurl.com instead of saying “custom name” they used the word “nickname” for the optional custom features. You can also put a password, known as “private key” on the url. You can also put a title of URL that you are trying to trim/shorten so that you can search it later on SnipURL website.
- TweetBurner.com
Name says it all. Using the Twitter API this service is providing URL shortening service for twitter. http://tweetburner.com is using another domain for making the URLs short. http://twurl.nl is the domain which is basicallyly used for short URLs. TweetBurner is also counting the clicks on the short URLs and then display the most clicked URLs on the main page.
- AdJix.com
This is not a simple URL shortening service. http://adjix.com gives you the facility to select the ads which you want to show on the URL. When you open the short URL it shows a little header banner ad on the top of the URL too. So they are earning with short URLs too. AdJix is using an extra domain also to trim the URL. The adjix own short URL is called “Short URL” and then they have http://ad.vu which they call is “Ultra Short URL”.
- MetaMark.net
A very simple looking website. The outlook of http://metamark.net is also quite simple, a simple CSS web template with no images or anything. It also calls the custom URL as “Nickname” and you can also put a password type of thing on your short URL called “Secret”. When you trim/shorten your long URL it gives you the URL of http://xrl.us. MetaMark.net is also using another domain which is short as compared to “metamark”.
Sorry to have tossed so many notes at you.
I found out that hitting return after typing in the custom name gets it recognized and it works as the alternate shortened url. But I find it really odd that their voluminous info doesn’t mention, as a memory ticker, what custom name you chose for it.
Anyway, I wrote to you because I read about the bit.ly details at your site today 🙂
– Andrys
i think http://www.dot.tk is the bast because it provides a extension .tk and its more than best what do you think????