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How TinyURL works and impact on SEO

Posted by Josh on Thursday, December 18th, 2008.

Websites like TinyURL allow you to shorten long URL’s into short ones. For instance, you might be reading a post on our blog that has a long URL, such as http://www.web1marketing.com/blog/index.php/archives/international-seo-subdomains-or-folders/. This can cause problems in email and will take up all of your message room in text messages or Twitter. TinyURL converts this into a much shorter URL, like this: http://tinyurl.com/67lwfe. This link will take you to the same place, but it’s much easier to share.

How does this service work? What’s actually happening behind the scenes? In particular, does the technical implementation hinder SEO efforts that use such links?

Using Rex Swain’s terrific HTTP Viewer, we can how the TinyURL server responds.

HTTP/1.1·301·Moved·Permanently(CR)(LF)
Connection:·close(CR)(LF)
Location:·http://www.web1marketing.com/blog/index.php/archives/international-seo-subdomains-or-folders/(CR)(LF)
Content-type:·text/html(CR)(LF)
Content-Length:·0(CR)(LF)
Date:·Thu,·18·Dec·2008·18:55:34·GMT(CR)(LF)
Server:·TinyURL/1.6(CR)(LF)
(CR)(LF)

TinyURL uses a 301 Redirect to translate their constructed URL to the intended one. This means that any links to the TinyURL should be interpreted as pointing toward the target URL, preserving most or all of the “link credit” of those links.

Other services like Zi.ma and u.mavrev.com also use 301 redirects. BudURL uses a 307 redirect. We don’t know how search engines treat 307 redirects with respect to passing page rank, and we thus advise using 301-based URL shortening services.

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9 Responses to “How TinyURL works and impact on SEO”

  1. Josh Freedman Says:
    December 19th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Bit.ly now uses 301 redirects. A look at bit.ly shows that it uses 302 redirects, which is “supposed” to be “temporary.” We advise staying away from bit.ly for SEO reasons because a 302 tells search engines that it could move somewhere else at some other time. In other words, the page that specifies the 302 could revoke it or point it somewhere else, and search engines will comply. 301’s are vastly preferred.

  2. Ian Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Great info. Thanks for sharing.

  3. Nathan Folkman Says:
    January 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Hi,

    bit.ly currently also returns a 301 redirect for all hashes generated:

    Connected to bit.ly.
    Escape character is ‘^]’.
    GET /pkPM HTTP/1.0

    HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

  4. Josh Freedman Says:
    January 19th, 2009 at 12:24 am

    http://is.gd/ uses a 301 redirect.

  5. Think before you shrink « Writer Way Says:
    February 24th, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    […] Think before you shrink Jump to Comments Web 1 Marketing has a great post on how shrinking a URL (using services such as TinyURL or BudURL) works and how it affects SEO. Turns out there are two different types of redirects at work, and one is preferable to the other. If you are shrinking URLs for SEO work, you’ll want to check this out. […]

  6. Josh Says:
    June 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Danny Sullivan does a nice comparison at http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204.

  7. Greg Sneden Says:
    September 9th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Awesome info Josh! Anyone know what kind of redirect tr.im uses?

  8. Josh Says:
    September 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    Tr.im uses a 301 redirect.

  9. Tips Cari Backlinks Dengan Update Status « Belajar Wordpress Says:
    March 7th, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    […] http://www.web1marketing.com/blog/index.php/archives/how-tinyurl-works-tinyurl-seo/ […]