Does anyone use a URL shortening service to track clicks?

[Dean]

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone here uses a URL shortening service like bit.ly or something else to keep track of the clicks they receive for things like landing pages, squeeze pages, from social media, etc..

I know that some people do this around the web but I was wondering if anyone here uses them and if they are seeing the results that they are looking for.

Any information that you care to share would be appreciated.

Cheers, Dean.

 

[KeralMTG]

I have not used them before but I plan to use those when I get my new blog started. I want to be able to see where each click comes from so I can decide on any changes I need to make.

I see many people using them so it must give good data.

 

[ProfMike]

I don't use bit.ly, but I do track everything that comes in my site, it is the best way to see how effective certain areas of the site are.

I have written my own apps to track the information that I am looking for. In my opinion it makes it much more effective, I keep all the data and it is not being shared around the web with a third party services. One of the issues that I have read about with using these third party URL services is they also track your data.

I have a problem with that. I know that they need to make money too but they do not seem to be real up front on what information they are screening out and what they do with it.

As always, just an opinion.

 

[Dean]

I don't use bit.ly, but I do track everything that comes in my site, it is the best way to see how effective certain areas of the site are.

I have written my own apps to track the information that I am looking for. In my opinion it makes it much more effective, I keep all the data and it is not being shared around the web with a third party services. One of the issues that I have read about with using these third party URL services is they also track your data.

I have a problem with that. I know that they need to make money too but they do not seem to be real up front on what information they are screening out and what they do with it.

As always, just an opinion.

Well that seems like a good approach Mike. What kind of information can your apps track? Can they track the same things that can be found in Google Analytics for example? That would be pretty nice to be able to get that kind of information.

I really don't know what kind of information the link shortening services can track and provide to their users but I don't think that they provide much data other than clicks, location and a few other minor things.

I hadn't heard about the 3rd party link shortening services using and sharing data but I wouldn't put it past them. I don't use them so I really don't know but if they do that then they should disclose that in their TOS.

It's crazy how all these online services all want ti mine and share/sell the data from everyone. Things are really getting crazy these days.

Cheers, Dean.

 

[Muzzamil]

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone here uses a URL shortening service like bit.ly or something else to keep track of the clicks they receive for things like landing pages, squeeze pages, from social media, etc..

I know that some people do this around the web but I was wondering if anyone here uses them and if they are seeing the results that they are looking for.

Any information that you care to share would be appreciated.

Cheers, Dean.

For link shortner, I use tidy url. For tracking, I use "simple trakk" which is a third party tracking system. It shows 'Clicks, Actions, Income, EPC.' It is really helpful because you can easily tell which one of your campaign is driving traffic and which one is actually making you money.

 

[ProfMike]

Well that seems like a good approach Mike. What kind of information can your apps track? Can they track the same things that can be found in Google Analytics for example? That would be pretty nice to be able to get that kind of information.

I have been using the approach for a couple years now and it does seem to gather some very useful information. I gather quite a bit of information on the connections. Most of it is generic information, IP address, locality, length of time on the site, landing page, number of visits, etc.

Then I can get a little more specific and see where they have navigated to, how long they stayed on each page, the city and country the connection was from, etc. This can be very helpful when trying to determine where the best conversions are coming from.

There are quite a few apps out there that can track this information and more, but many of them require connections back to the author and I will not put those on my site.

 

[Dean]

I have been using the approach for a couple years now and it does seem to gather some very useful information. I gather quite a bit of information on the connections. Most of it is generic information, IP address, locality, length of time on the site, landing page, number of visits, etc.

Then I can get a little more specific and see where they have navigated to, how long they stayed on each page, the city and country the connection was from, etc. This can be very helpful when trying to determine where the best conversions are coming from.

There are quite a few apps out there that can track this information and more, but many of them require connections back to the author and I will not put those on my site.

Wow, that's pretty cool. This type of information is probably helpful when you are trying to figure out any changes or tweaks to your site I bet.

I haven't really gotten too much into the analytics of all my sites as of yet. I plan on doing so one day though. Maybe later down the road once I know more about programming and implementing these types of programs I can see what can be done.

I do like the idea of having data on certain things, just to see what is working best, I just don't like other third party services have access to the same data that I would view as mine. Doing this as you do would eliminate that third party and their data farming.

Cheers, Dean.

 

[KeralMTG]

I don't use bit.ly, but I do track everything that comes in my site, it is the best way to see how effective certain areas of the site are.

I have written my own apps to track the information that I am looking for. In my opinion it makes it much more effective, I keep all the data and it is not being shared around the web with a third party services. One of the issues that I have read about with using these third party URL services is they also track your data.

I have a problem with that. I know that they need to make money too but they do not seem to be real up front on what information they are screening out and what they do with it.

As always, just an opinion.

This is something I would like to do later. Is it hard to write the apps to track the information? I always thought you must use a service to do this. I did not know that you can do it yourself for those technical things.

 

[ProfMike]

Is it hard to write apps to track the information? That all depends on how much background you have in programming.

You are basically just capturing a lot of information that is out on the web based on a users connection. The information is out there you are just peeling it out of the meta data from the connection. There are many different ways to do it. The reason developers write their own apps is that they want sole use of the information gathered. Most services will charge you to gather the information coming to your site and then use your site member / user information to sell to different traffic services, email lists, etc.

 

[KeralMTG]

Is it hard to write apps to track the information? That all depends on how much background you have in programming.

You are basically just capturing a lot of information that is out on the web based on a users connection. The information is out there you are just peeling it out of the meta data from the connection. There are many different ways to do it. The reason developers write their own apps is that they want sole use of the information gathered. Most services will charge you to gather the information coming to your site and then use your site member / user information to sell to different traffic services, email lists, etc.

Well since you get to keep all the information to yourself then that is much better than letting everyone else take it!

I do not have much knowledge about programming so I will probably not be able to do that till maybe later. Is it just HTML code for this kind of app?

 

[ProfMike]

No it is not HTML code, as HTML is a scripting language and not a programming language. I have written the code I use in .net.

It would probably be better to write it in C, as it would be more transparent, much more secure and much easier to compile into a small lightweight app. That will eventually be the road I take, but that will take some time.

It was asked to develop it for a customer a few years ago and over the last few years I have just enhanced it for my own use and tracking. I keep adding to it as I learn more about the type of information that I want to track. I really need to go through it and clean it up. As I add to it I tweak the code to support the new features and have not really gone back through it to get rid of duplicate code and refactor the code that I am using. One of these days, when I get some time, I will rewrite it from scratch and probably make it much more efficient.

That's a project for another day.

 

[KeralMTG]

No it is not HTML code, as HTML is a scripting language and not a programming language. I have written the code I use in .net.

It would probably be better to write it in C, as it would be more transparent, much more secure and much easier to compile into a small lightweight app. That will eventually be the road I take, but that will take some time.

It was asked to develop it for a customer a few years ago and over the last few years I have just enhanced it for my own use and tracking. I keep adding to it as I learn more about the type of information that I want to track. I really need to go through it and clean it up. As I add to it I tweak the code to support the new features and have not really gone back through it to get rid of duplicate code and refactor the code that I am using. One of these days, when I get some time, I will rewrite it from scratch and probably make it much more efficient.

That's a project for another day.

I do not know much of those other languages but I have heard of them. Isn't the .net language a microsoft language? I always see .net stuff in windows updates files.

 

[ProfMike]

Yes .net is Microsoft and much to my, and many other peoples surprise, that goofy language is taking over many areas of programming.

It is not that it is a bad language, it is just that it could be so much better. But when dealing with Microsoft you kind of take what you get and understand that. When your the big dog on the block you can bark the loudest.

 

[KeralMTG]

Yes .net is Microsoft and much to my, and many other peoples surprise, that goofy language is taking over many areas of programming.

It is not that it is a bad language, it is just that it could be so much better. But when dealing with Microsoft you kind of take what you get and understand that. When your the big dog on the block you can bark the loudest.

So then a microsoft language will work with others that are not microsoft without issues? I though all had to be microsoft.

 

[ProfMike]

Depending upon what you are doing, many of the languages can be interspersed with other languages.

But for example, the C programming language is the C programming language. It is written with many different variations and vendors, and many of the variations have enhancements that may in some peoples view make it easier to use, but in the core they are all C.

.net was developed by Microsoft and has become pretty popular. There are many 3rd party enhancements, many of them written in C that enhance or add to the functionality of .net.

Now when you start mixing programming environments as you write an application, of course there can be issues. Many of those have more to do with how you write they code and the hardware, then the actual code itself.

 

[KeralMTG]

Depending upon what you are doing, many of the languages can be interspersed with other languages.

But for example, the C programming language is the C programming language. It is written with many different variations and vendors, and many of the variations have enhancements that may in some peoples view make it easier to use, but in the core they are all C.

.net was developed by Microsoft and has become pretty popular. There are many 3rd party enhancements, many of them written in C that enhance or add to the functionality of .net.

Now when you start mixing programming environments as you write an application, of course there can be issues. Many of those have more to do with how you write they code and the hardware, then the actual code itself.

I just do not understand why the .net things are in windows. I keep getting updates for them but I have never used that for anything. I guess it is there for developers by default?

 

[Mary klipyard]

use bilty and adly for shortening your websites