Why does everyone use bitly?

[JML1179]

Why do people use bitly? I thought it was just a way to share a link on twitter if the link was too long in url.

I see SeoMoz shares all their content with a bitly link. Even when they share it on Google+. Why?

[AlanBleiweiss]

bitly is one of the most well established shortener services available.  They provide click-through data across several data points.  This helps site owners track the relative success or shortcomings of content they wish to promote, and can be used to determine what works and what doesn't from a marketing and promotion perspective.

[JML1179]

Can't you use google analytics to determine people are coming to your site?

[AlanBleiweiss]

there are many ways to track traffic, however if you use a shortener service like bitly, you get a shorter URL for easier / cleaner distribution, you can rapidly evaluate a specific URL's performance tied directly to a specific marketing campaign method, and when other people spread that shortened link, it's just as effortless to track click-through for that specific initiative regardless of how many times that is shared.  Much easier than digging into analytics and setting up unique campaigns.

It is of course, far from perfect, and there are many ways to get the data - bitly is just one and it's handy.  Especially with the functionality of generating the unique shortened URL on the fly which is much faster than setting up custom tracking campaigns in GA.

[GoodAtMarketing]

I'm a bit skeptical of using bit.ly. When someone does a 301 redirect some of the link juice gets lost, not ,much but some. Using a shortner will 301 the user. As Alan stated bit.ly is great for tracking and keeping your tweets within character limit.

Please don't quote me on this but Google has their own shortner goo.gl, perhaps Google's shortner will pass all the juice...

[AlanBleiweiss]

sometimes you need to not worry about if/then SEO factors because that's how we end up falling into magic trick traps.  Sometimes it's truly more valuable to allow other reasons to be the decider.