About url shorterner like ow.ly - does it count?

[vladokan]

Hi there,

I want to ask do you know does Google counts web pages' links in social medias like Facebook, Twitter etc when they are shortened like that: And is it better not to be shortened like that?

http://ow.ly/2uk0Ow

I am using HootSuite to post in those social medias and it automatically shortens them like that when there is a new post in rss emission.

[ThompsonPaul]

Proper link shorteners like Ow.ly use 301 redirects to point to the final link destination, so Google counts them pretty much the same as a regular unshortened link.

The benefits of a shortened link in Twitter to allow you to include other info in the 140 characters makes them pretty much essential.

One other benefit of shortened links is you can include Analytics tracking parameters in them if you're linking back to your own site. That way you can accurately track where your own website traffic is coming from. (Hootsuite Pro lets you set this up to occur automatically.)

Even if you're linking to other sites, the click analytics built into the link shorteners can give you some useful info on how many times your links were clicked.

So short answer - shortened links don't have an real problems from an SEO perspective and the extra analytics they allow can be very useful.