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Do Tiny URL's hinder or help SEO efforts - your thoughts please
Posted by wandadog13 • 2/26/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: SEO, tiny url
Do search engines crawl sites like tiny url to see what links have been submitted? Do search engines follow tiny urls in articles and web pages back to source?
Do tiny url's and other such url shortening services improve your seo or hinder it by not showing the full url?
Just a random though that popped in my head - wondered what you people thought? Any experiences - good or bad? Do share.
User Comments
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I would never use short links for anything important if thinking about SEO because it prevents the most important aspects of links. Meaningful text in the link itself.
Whether Google crawls them I haven't tested myself, I would imagine they do - but whether they weigh them much importance is a totally different matter.
Also - personally I very rarely click on short links unless there is a reverse lookup available for the service, because I want to know where I'm going to end up when I click a link. A short link can send you anywhere if you aren't careful.
Some times - if I need to follow a short link - I use a HTTP header tool, so I can see the URL I'm being redirected to, so I can verify it is where I'm intended to go.
I avoid them as much as I can, both SEO wise and security wise.-
good answer! Yes the loss of relevant keywords in the file name you're linking to is a real problem there. Anyone else have any intelligence on whether the search engines crawl tiny urls etc.?
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I never use any on my blog for the reasons given.-
thanks LaMirabelle for the input. I see tiny urls being used more and more on the sites i visit - is this the beginning of the end for file name / title seo or will the search engine adjust - assuming they haven't already of course?
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