Sharing shortened URL on social media- Pros and Cons

It really gives me immense pleasure discussing about this amazing service- URL Shortening. Talking about technology, there is not even an inch of doubt where we have reached today with the help of different service providers like goo.gl and tinyurl.com. Social media marketing is also looking positive for shortening URL approach that has been taken to tackle with huge URLs.

And from past few years URL shortening services are getting appreciated and are really helping people in getting rid of those lengthy URLs. So you need to worry while sharing your links among your friends, or referring it on your social networking sites.

How to create a friendly URL?

• Open goo.gl or tinyurl.com from your browser.
• Copy and paste the URL in the space provided to you.
  
• Now you are good to share your shortened link.

Apart from receiving good positive reviews from their clients, URL services are getting criticized as well. Now I will be taking you guys to look at both of its sides- positive and negative.

Smart move to deal with long URLs

Many times web developers put descriptive attributes in their URL to give it a hierarchical data structure. As a result, URL become too long (in terms of characters) and gives it a complex form. After that it becomes clumsy to handle such URLs. To make it easy to memorize or to type-out, many service providers such as tinyurl.com, goo.gl, bit.ly came out with the idea of shortening the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and became successful in putting it out in a human-readable format.

Facebook and LinkedIn are also favouring this tiny URL technique. Clearly this solution has given us an upper hand while dealing with these ugly looking URLs. This has given us many pros as listed below:-

• Easy to manage– You can share these friendly links with anyone. It has undoubtedly solved the problem of saving number of characters on Twitter, while messaging someone from it. Using this technique your URL’s character will never exceed its count of 20.
• You can track click data– Using bit.ly let you know where your link is getting clicked providing you your data’s geographical location. This will help companies a lot in serving its clients with better products.
• A way to promote sharing– With the help of URL shorteners, you can enter 5-6 links in a single go with a limitation of 140 characters. Sharing web content has become easier so far.

With link shortening capabilities, these sites are getting recognized on a global platform and helping their customers in a true sense.

Pitfalls of getting into this technique

Yes, you may be at risk when you use that tiny URL. There are experts who found this as a troublesome tool. When you get registered as a member of these URL shortening service providers, chances are there that your information may get leaked as these sites have the records of previously entered bulky URLs. This can result in various consequences as mentioned below:

• Once hacked, your link might be at risk as anyone can access it.
• Possibilities are there that your link redirects you to some unexpected sites which can be deteriorating your privacy and security.

Moreover there can be some delay in browsing your data due to inclusion of some additional layer of complexities. Using this technique the clicker don’t know where the link will take them by just hovering over it which is not good as there are some sites which do not offer link previews. Many times shortened URL can be utilized by spammers.

SEO professionals may keep these factors in mind, one should make out whether they want to go with this so called cool technique or not. Its true that it gives the option of shortening your links but on the other hand it can be risky in terms of your security. So be meticulous while opting for this tool.