Peeking Behind TinyURL

Do you know of TinyURL.com? The service that takes a really long link and creates a very short version?

One of the great things about TinyURL.com is the creation of a really short name, which is great for several reasons, such as using in print, emails, newsletters, forum posts, etc. It’s also used for cloaking/masking affiliate links, more about that in a minute.

But this really short name is also one of the frustrations for people using the service: as the link is represented by a mix of six letters and numbers, you never really can tell where it’s gonna head.

Until now.

For example, I just created a link to this post (http://www.deankennedy.com/blog/peeking-behind-tinyurl/) with TinyURL.

That resulted in: http://tinyurl.com/2sttxj

But later on, will you remember what 2sttxj is related to? Not likely!

And web visitors will never know what’s at the other end of the link. More uncertainly equals less clicks. Especially in the affiliate world, where this is a crude way to mask an affiliate link. Worse, you’re relying on a third party (in this case, the tinyURL website/creators) to keep offering the service free. Otherwise your links may disappear/die. You’re better off with your own system for easy-to-remember links or to deal with the need to cloak/mask the destination (without such a preview feature!).

But for end-user interaction with TinyURL links, TinyURL.com has come to the rescue!

Instead of using http://tinyurl.com/2sttxj you simply use http://preview.tinyurl.com/2sttxj

This will take you to a page that shows you the link before you click on it. Whenever you see a regular TinyURL.com link, you can copy the link into your address bar, and manually add in the “preview.” — it will still work this way. But there’s an even better option: when I visited TinyURL.com, I turned on a cookie so that, by default, all TinyURL.com links automatically display a preview first (you can turn it off again if you want to).

That will reveal the page that the link will be taking you to as its final destination.

Now there are of course other “short URL” services that compete with TinyURL.com that don’t have this feature. However, TinyURL.com is one of the popular options so it’s one of the more likely services you’ll see.

So now with TinyURL.com links, you don’t have any uncertainty, nor do you have to guess! You get to see the final destination before you visit that page!

3 February 2008 | Filed Under Web Tips