Product Review: Cli.gs URL Shortener and Click Tracker

I’ve been playing around with Cligs (rhymes with “pigs”; like “clicks”, only with a “guh” sound), which is a free Web service that’s been getting some play lately (Shashi clued me in to it).  At its heart, it’s a URL shortener (a crowded field, no doubt), though it also gives you click metrics (a less-crowded field). But let me back up a step.

URL shorteners first came about when people needed a way to send really long URLs in e-mail, IM and other places, without having the URLs break because of line wraps. (TinyURL was the first and best-known.) URL shorteners simply convert the really long URLs into really short URLs that redirect to the site you’re going to.

At first, URL shortening services were just a convenience. Dynamically-generated URLs (especially from mapping programs) can run into the hundreds of characters — some even exceeded the character limits for Web publishing systems I’ve used — which are annoying to work with. However, URL shorteners became necessities for microblogging, where you’re limited to as few as 140 characters. Most microblogging services will automatically run URLs over a certain length through an URL shortener, so you can save valuable characters to talk about your lunch or whatever.

Anyway, Cligs is a free service (requires registration) that does URL shortening and also adds in a click metrics component, so you can get numbers on how many people are clicking on your links and where they’re coming from (both geographically and in terms of referrers).

By way of example, I have a test Cligs URL (http://cli.gs/VMJJm1) that goes to a Washington Post article about a bit of pre-snow panic. I posted it to my Twitter account, and you can see where the clicks came from (I anonymized the links — also, you can see that “referrer” is consistently misspelled):

The no-referrer hits probably came from a Twitter desktop client of one sort or another; you can also see hits from various Web-based Twitter URL tools and Facebook (my Twitter updates also feed my Facebook updates).

You can also see that this link didn’t really set the world on fire.

There are additional stats (including graphs) and additional tools (edit, duplicate, and repost cligs), but you get the idea.

It seems to work okay — I haven’t run any campaigns on particular URLs. (About the only thing cli.gs is missing right now is a way to reset or recover a forgotten password. Don’t ask me how I know this.)

The point of all this, though, is for you to be able to get a better sense of the effectiveness of the links that you share to various services, which are outside of any click metrics that you’re running on your own site (Like the free Google Analytics, Sitemeter or Statcounter). Because sharing your expertise through socially-shared links is nice, but knowing what people respond to, so you can better allocate your time and attention, is nicer.

Cligs and its cohorts are additional tools for your metrics toolbox, to capture a specific segment of your content. It’s to link traffic what Feedburner does for RSS metrics.

One caveat that goes for any URL shortener or link redirection service — you’re relying on its continued existence for your links not to break. A consideration (even a small one) in these uncertain times — you’ll need to judge the value of the metrics versus any perceived risk. Also, I know I’m sometimes hesitant to click links when I can’t see the underlying URL (too many Rickrolls and password phishing attempts); that’s where services like LongURL come in, which expand shortened URLs so you can see where you’re going. Kind of perverse when you think about it, but useful.

If you’ve got experiences with Cli.gs, bit.ly, or other URL shortener and click metrics services, please leave a comment below.