I Took A Bite Out Of Bit.ly!

Honestly, how do you keep up with all of it? I mean, how can you possibly track all of the wonderful web applications, extensions and related paraphernalia which are rolled out, updated and refined on what seems to be a daily basis?

Biting Bit.ly

A case in point is Bit.ly, an odd sounding but amazingly resourceful URL shortener packed with all the amenities you can imagine. Not only are your web addresses shortened when you use this tool, but you can change the suffix to something that is uniquely yours.

For example, when I created an automatically shortened link for this lengthy URL: http://thearticlewriter.com/autowriter/no-mahindra-models-this-year/, Bit.ly rendered http://bit.ly/xWeBv instead.

But it gets even better than that.

Next, I adjusted the URL to read http://bit.ly/mahindra-trucks/ which allowed me to claim “Mahindra trucks” as my embedded word phrase. Why was this important to me? Well, Mahindra will be selling their all new pickup trucks in the United States beginning Spring 2010, therefore I wanted a recognizable and highly searchable web address to match my article. After all, if I’m to promote my authority as an automotive columnist, you should be able to find some of my cutting edge articles, right? You bet!

Certainly, I could have used an abbreviated URL on my blog post, but I don’t: I prefer to match my title with my URL which makes for some very long Twitter-unfriendly web addresses.

Customizing Bit.ly

Of course, what good is a URL shortener if all it does is whack your address and allow you to customize it? Certainly, having statistics to go along with your work would help.

Indeed, Bit.ly offers registered users the ability to track their links by seeing just how many people click on their links over a period of time as well as within the past hour, what sites are referring traffic to your URL, the countries from where clicks are coming from, and what Twitter conversations are mentioning your URL. Track buzz in real time or sort through that information days later. The choice is yours.

Bit.ly is, by the way, the default URL shortener for TweetDeck and was recently incorporated into Twitter itself. This is good news, because a number of web shortener applications have closed down or will close down eventually including Tr.im. This means that if your web shortener dies, then your links will perish too – not a good prospect, especially if you’ve put so much time into working your links.

Influencing Bit.ly

In just a few days I entered 75 links into Bit.ly from across my site network in a bid to gauge effectiveness. I mixed new articles with old ones including some I had tweeted in the past. A handful completely bombed because they ran out of tweeter juice ages ago. Still, the related statistical information comes in handy, something I will be using along with Google Analytics to help me monitor traffic, referrals, locations and more.

Are you using Twitter? Lots of people are and, according to Danny Sullivan, it ranks up there with Tiny URL which is the grand-daddy of all address shorteners on the market.

Libya Bit.ly

Lastly, the .ly extension for Bit.ly stands for Libya. That country has had its ups and downs over the years, which may cause some people to worry that Libya could one day whack Bit.ly, Owl.ly and others who are using this domain extension. But, with two million dollars in recently funding, the investors in Bit.ly don’t seem to be worrying about this URL shortener’s long term survival, thus I won’t either.

Put A Little Zing Into Your Bing!

Real Live Search API Is A Blast.

I must admit that I haven’t embraced Bing yet, the new search engine from Microsoft. Then again, I haven’t forgotten about it, making the occasional foray over there to see what is new or different. I’m still finding that some results served are off, including photos attributed to me that really aren’t mine. No matter, I was intrigued when I discovered that Long Zheng had developed an API (application programming interface) that puts Bing on steroids, one of the niftiest I’ve seen to date.

The Real Live Search

Dubbed, “The Real Live Search” by Zheng, this API delivers search results almost as fast as you can type them. For example, as I was typing in “New York Giants” the results quickly narrowed to the city and finally to the team. I should say “lastly” as there wasn’t anything slow about how the results were “finally” served – the moment I was done I received a list of links, several photographs and additional links to related searches including “New York Giants Logo” and “New York Giants schedule” among others.

Zheng must be some sort of wonder kid as I have at least two pairs of shoes that have been around longer than he has. At the ripe young age of 21, Zheng runs the istartedsomething.com website which is is where he demonstrates his technological prowess.

Born in mainland China, Zheng moved to Australia when he was nine and is currently majoring in Marketing Communications and Multimedia Systems Enterprise at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to his studies, Zheng works for a software development firm in Sydney and takes on other “obscure” projects with friends.

Up & Running Fast

In his blog post describing The Real Live Search, Zheng mentions that the tool took him just a few hours to build which also means that it could prove buggy. Moreover, with tech sites picking up the news about Zheng’s project, there is a good chance that the site will crash by the time that you look it over.

Me thinks that this kid has a bright future ahead of him. I’m checking out some of his other blog posts to see what he is discussing.

Bing Still Bouncing

Speaking of Bing, the new search engine’s share of the marketplace is now up to 8.9 percent, in the US market. Bing still trails Google who controls 64.7 percent of the market and Yahoo which has 19.3 percent of all searches, which means that if Bing and Yahoo were one right now, the Bing would control just over 28 percent of the search engine market.

Microsoft may want to consider hiring Zheng; his Bing API truly rocks!

See Also – Bing, Bong Yahoo Search Is Dead!