A URL Tracking Hack Worth Knowing

The first time I heard about this hack it was at the Search marketing Expo (SMX - East) in New York City. After learning about bit.ly’s tracking capabilities I was able to go back and see how many people had been clicking on my bit.ly links, very cool. Why I had never heard of this hack before is beyond me.

 For all of us that use social media on a regular basis you can now find out how effective your social media campaign / links are.  The only prerequisite is that you do need to have a link in your post, and that link needs to be a bit.ly link.

 Just in case you didn’t know bit.ly is a URL shortener, and is widely used in social media especially Twitter. With Twitter’s 140 character limit bit.ly will take your URL and shorten it for you.

In order to track your link results all you need to do is add a plus (+) sign to the end of any bit.ly link and you will be taken to a statistics page. You will be able to see how many people clicked on your link. It will tell you what date and time your link was clicked on. It will also provide you with referrer and location information.

For those of us who use social media on a regular basis this is a great hack. Hope you enjoy it! Spread the word.