Is Shortened URLs Acceptable

Is Shortened URLs Acceptable?

With so many changes taking place, I began to question everything, or be conscious of a little more than I did before the Panda Update. In fact, I began to wonder if possibly the shortened URL I was using may cause a problem with Google spiders when using it within my content for SEO purposes? Why do I ask this? Because it is a redirect, and sometimes Google spiders do not take too kindly to redirects.

However, according to Matt Cutts, if their spider finds a custom URL shortener, like bit.ly or goo.gl, they will pass the PageRank to the final destination. Though his comment was a little wordy, it means, yes your can use URL shorteners in your SEO, as long as the URL shortener is known to behave itself.

What is nice to know is that both the anchor text and the PageRank will all flow through the URL. Goo.gl and Bit.ly are two of the different URL shorteners named. Though just an example, the emphasis was on the reliability of the behavior of these shorteners. If they are well-behaved and the 301 redirect goes where they are suppose to go, then Google has no problem. Maybe these two shorteners were a helpful suggestion, I'm not sure. But I guess I'll try to use bit.ly if I need an URL shortened.

Anyway, many,  didn't think much about an URL shortener's behavior. I definitely let my guard down on this bit of news. What news, not all shorteners behave nicely. However, since a person's livelihood can way in the balance, I was glad that Google gave several examples of several shorteners.

Yeah, I know, goo.gl is a Google shortener, but bit.ly is not.  Currently Google's shortener only works with Chrome. So if you have Chrome, go for it. However, if you use another something other than Chrome, you may want to use bit.ly.

You may wonder about why I have a concern about what or if you can use an URL shortener? If the spider backs away from the shortened URL, you will not get your page indexed, if the page is not indexed, don't expect to many visitors.