bit.ly Blog: Bit.ly + Google Analytics Campaign Builder Tool
digideth
· 6 months ago
thank you!
nickgonzalez
· 6 months ago
Awesome.
Ted Rheingold
· 6 months ago
Nice.
Bordellführer
· 6 months ago
wow, really great instructions, thx! I'll give it a try
Eric Pederson
· 6 months ago
We would like to be able to have Google Analytics source and medium url parameters automatically added to each link that gets shortened. That way our marketers and bloggers (who use Tweetdeck and bit.ly) don't have to remember to add them. Is this possible?
kortina
· 6 months ago
Not right now, sorry.
TheRealTerry
· 6 months ago
You need this feature ASAP and it needs to have a filter so you can set the auto-tagging to only occur on certain domains (ie: the ones you have Google Analytics running on, not other sites you link out to.) I brought this issue up with tr.im and they gave me the impression that they don't really care about analytics. I read in Danny Sullivan's recent article and this blog post that you are keeping it in mind, which is great, but I can't express to you how much it is an absolute must that shorteners address this now. No one should use a shortener until it is solved as the benefits of a shorter address a hundred notches down on the priority scale from knowing where your traffic comes from. Accountability supercedes convenience. The URL shortener game will be won by the service that provides this first.
Mr. Gunn
· 6 months ago
I do agree better analytics support would be great, but let's not forget that there are people besides marketers who shorten links and use twitter.
Djames
· 6 months ago
That's cool, they don't need to use this feature.
Eric P
· 6 months ago
Bit.ly's tag line is "Shorten, share and *track* your links". Analytics/Metrics/Tracking is the #1 reason that URL shorteners exist. Besides shortening URLs, of course :)
Go back through all the blog posts here, 80% of them deal with analytics.
TheRealTerry
· 6 months ago
Mr. Gunn, that's the kind of response I heard from tr.im, and yeah, that's true, but are those other people the ones with ad dollars and budgets for services to spend? Not to say the average user is secondary at all, but even the average user uses analytics.
I think Eric P has a very big point there. You can't have tracking in your tagline and be making everyone's referrer data show as direct traffic in their reporting. It's a backwards step, and not just for URL shorteners, but social media in general. How can we expect to get decision makers behind giving serious consideration to investing time and resources into the social web when the response metrics just aren't there.
Believe me, I fully respect that the time and effort that goes into developing tools like this, and we all really appreciate what companies like this do. I think all we are expressing is that throughout much of the tools and sites related to social media metrics take a backseat and go to the end of the line when it comes to development consideration. I think this is just a very serious oversight and it warrants far more attention than people are giving it.
Mr. Gunn
· 6 months ago
Now this is the kind of discussion I'd like to be having! I'm going to say some stuff you're going to disagree with, and probably some stuff that pisses you off, Terry, but I want as much as you do to get analytics that works well, because I need to measure social media impact for my job, too. So I'm speaking from my perception of reality on how to get analytics that works, with no malice intended.
On a daily basis, I deal with problems and questions about measuring social media activity, and there really is no way to get corporate boards made up of mostly people who remember the Golden Age of radio to get on board with social media unless there's a good way to measure it. Unfortunately, the analytics tools are mostly made by people with a marketing/analytics background, which means most people won't use them, so the very use of them tags the user as a marketer, which means any link shortened with them starts out with a performance penalty. Bit.ly is popular because of the fact it's simple and clean - no frames or heavy tracking overhead, no wonkiness.
As much as I would love better metrics, the non-metric aspects of the shortener must come first if anyone's gonna use the thing. This is what bit.ly does well and ow.ly does really poorly.
Professional marketing and SEO is absolutely necessary for social media to be taken seriously by people with money, but you've got to think of yourselves like trash collectors. You provide a necessary service, but most people would rather you stayed out of sight and out of mind. Now, I understand that sounds really harsh, but I also think it reflects reality. It's a tough job - you're doing something really valuable and important, but you'll never be well-respected except among your own profession.
Now, how do we get analytics that puts the usability first, but also allows stats to be collected. IOW, without changing how bit.ly looks to the average user, how to we add analytics, invisibly?
TheRealTerry
· 6 months ago
Hah! I totally get that, and I take no offense to that. I personally find it infinitely amusing when the "general public" decries ads and claims they hate and don't click them, especially when I'm staring at metrics that without a doubt prove otherwise! Don't worry about us marketers, we know the truth, that we help people who need things connect with the people who make those things. We put food on tables, clothes on kids and generally keep the economy moving. Don't you worry about us, we sleep just fine at night!
But, as much as I may be a marketer, I started as a developer and still spend at least 25% of my week with my head deep in some LAMP development and I know my way around a command line, so when I say I appreciate what goes into making these tools, I sincerely mean it.
How do you add analytics invisbly? Here's my proposal. In the account interface you add the ability to set conditional URL modifications. For example:
I enter: $url to shorten, $domain to check for and $tracking string to append
Then, the shortening app just does a check against your conditional list and performs the following: If $url contains $domain then append $tracking
It really just needs to be as simple as that, nothing crazy. If you don't need the feature you never have to see it, it has nothing to do with where you enter the actual URLs, just a global account setting power users can decide to use. Hell, charge for it if you want. If you're the only game in town doing that, you will get people paying for it.
Edd
· 5 months ago
@TheRealTerry is this additional bit.ly feature mentioned on their user suggestions page? http://bitly.uservoice.com/pages/5239-suggestions - which one to vote for? I'm guessing the Google Analytics one is the closest to what you're asking for
TheRealTerry
· 5 months ago
Yeah, that looks about the score.
onelag
· 6 months ago
Hey, I found out about this blog today. Sorry to bug but: why can't you use the "connect" twitter feature? It seems very insecure to set up a twitter account inside bit.ly, considering you don't really need to do it...
jonconnelly
· 5 months ago
Very cool indeed, nice to see you guys keep adding more features.
Dumb.ly
· 5 months ago
Unless bit.ly allows me to preview urls on a preview page without any downloads like bookmarklets and stuff like that, I'm never clicking any bit.ly link. Tinyurl gives me that option, by allowing preview links..and also enabling 'preview' on their site. So when I click on a tinyurl likn, I land on a tinyurl preview page, where I can see where I'm heading at..and I can make an informed decision whether to go ahead and visit the linked page, or abandon it. In these days of viruses and trojans and malwares, I'm never clicking any random, unknown links..if I don't recognize it.
And btw, your 'Customer Feedback/Suggestions Feedback' page http://bitly.uservoice.com/pages/5239-suggestions is retarded. What gave you the idea, that I can express this problem..which I just did above, in less than 140 stupid characters.
bgeisel1
· 5 months ago
Nice addition!
I was looking at some of the URL shorteners today and wondering why bit.ly is so popular. Now I know. I'll definitely be implementing this myself and adding a post on my blog about the merits of bit.ly.
Thanks!
Nathaniel
· 5 months ago
Excellent stuff! I have always wanted the amazing features of analytics to be worked in tandem with Bit.ly - and now I can! Keep up the excellent work you guys - excellent work.
zenshadow
· 5 months ago
maybe a bit off topic, but very important. anyone else having posting issues thru bit.ly lately (since the release of firefox 3.5) ... particularly the sharaholic firefox addon that has bit.ly as a social bookmarking (to twitter) keeps reporting a 'problem'. twitter working fine. cannot seem to post from the bit.ly site as well. help?? @zenshadow
kortina
· 5 months ago
Patch is forthcoming. It's on the staging server and will be live soon. Please bear with us.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
Do you have a list of which parameters can be added to the end of the URL, and for it still to be counted as the same canonical URL for the Info+ grouping? Does 301 rewriting to a canonical URL affect how a link is treated?
sideffects
· 3 months ago
I'm having a hard time understanding this tutorial without the pics. :(
Wow. Took me about five minutes of staring at the columns, fields, etc... to firgure out how to use it. Then I came back to write this comment and saw the instructions! LMAO. FYI your embedded images from flickr aren't present. ;)
All Comments
Go back through all the blog posts here, 80% of them deal with analytics.
I think Eric P has a very big point there. You can't have tracking in your tagline and be making everyone's referrer data show as direct traffic in their reporting. It's a backwards step, and not just for URL shorteners, but social media in general. How can we expect to get decision makers behind giving serious consideration to investing time and resources into the social web when the response metrics just aren't there.
Believe me, I fully respect that the time and effort that goes into developing tools like this, and we all really appreciate what companies like this do. I think all we are expressing is that throughout much of the tools and sites related to social media metrics take a backseat and go to the end of the line when it comes to development consideration. I think this is just a very serious oversight and it warrants far more attention than people are giving it.
On a daily basis, I deal with problems and questions about measuring social media activity, and there really is no way to get corporate boards made up of mostly people who remember the Golden Age of radio to get on board with social media unless there's a good way to measure it. Unfortunately, the analytics tools are mostly made by people with a marketing/analytics background, which means most people won't use them, so the very use of them tags the user as a marketer, which means any link shortened with them starts out with a performance penalty. Bit.ly is popular because of the fact it's simple and clean - no frames or heavy tracking overhead, no wonkiness.
As much as I would love better metrics, the non-metric aspects of the shortener must come first if anyone's gonna use the thing. This is what bit.ly does well and ow.ly does really poorly.
Professional marketing and SEO is absolutely necessary for social media to be taken seriously by people with money, but you've got to think of yourselves like trash collectors. You provide a necessary service, but most people would rather you stayed out of sight and out of mind. Now, I understand that sounds really harsh, but I also think it reflects reality. It's a tough job - you're doing something really valuable and important, but you'll never be well-respected except among your own profession.
Now, how do we get analytics that puts the usability first, but also allows stats to be collected. IOW, without changing how bit.ly looks to the average user, how to we add analytics, invisibly?
But, as much as I may be a marketer, I started as a developer and still spend at least 25% of my week with my head deep in some LAMP development and I know my way around a command line, so when I say I appreciate what goes into making these tools, I sincerely mean it.
How do you add analytics invisbly? Here's my proposal. In the account interface you add the ability to set conditional URL modifications. For example:
I enter: $url to shorten, $domain to check for and $tracking string to append
Then, the shortening app just does a check against your conditional list and performs the following:
If $url contains $domain then append $tracking
It really just needs to be as simple as that, nothing crazy. If you don't need the feature you never have to see it, it has nothing to do with where you enter the actual URLs, just a global account setting power users can decide to use. Hell, charge for it if you want. If you're the only game in town doing that, you will get people paying for it.
In these days of viruses and trojans and malwares, I'm never clicking any random, unknown links..if I don't recognize it.
And btw, your 'Customer Feedback/Suggestions Feedback' page http://bitly.uservoice.com/pages/5239-suggestions is retarded. What gave you the idea, that I can express this problem..which I just did above, in less than 140 stupid characters.
I was looking at some of the URL shorteners today and wondering why bit.ly is so popular. Now I know. I'll definitely be implementing this myself and adding a post on my blog about the merits of bit.ly.
Thanks!
Please bear with us.
Does 301 rewriting to a canonical URL affect how a link is treated?
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