Security and SEO concerns about URL shorteners

[djbaxter]

Twitter Tips: Not All URL Shorteners Are Alike
C.G. Lynch, CIO.com
Jun 2, 2009

URL shorteners have some drawbacks, too. For one, they are becoming weapons for spam attacks, because shortened URLs appear very generic. A typical shortened URL contains the address of the URL shortening service, followed by a few random characters.

Spammers can easily hide harmful links behind these addresses. They entice people to click on malware links by purporting that the link will lead to something useful and legitimate. This is more of a problem in e-mail, but it could occur on Twitter as you begin to follow random people you've never met.

Shortened URLs can be bad for the web ecosystem as well. Because Twitter has become a place we rely on to share the items we read, and ideally be able to search and find them again later, relying on these services could have its costs in the future. What if, for instance, a shortened URL service suffered an outage? If you wanted to access a link, and didn't have the original (long) URL, you might be in trouble. What if, more significantly, the service went out of business?

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In addition to the concerns raised in this article, from an SEO standpoint shortened URLs are a disaster: No anchor text. No keywords. Redirection through a third party service so not even a direct link to your page. In short, minimal to zero SEO benefit as far as I can see.

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Thanks for sharing. I use a tracking-cloaking system for all my affiliate links, as I like keeping an eye on my traffic sources. Is it OK to use them as anchor text links in articles and avoid them on my site? Or just completely dismiss it? I mean it is nice to know exactly your traffic sources and IP adresses, exact times someone visits your site. How can I compromise that?