It seems that an issue is developing with the use of the Tiny URL service which gives some PR benefit to sites linked to from the service. Using "No Follow" is not a solution in our case as this would have to be site wide and penalizes other members as a result.

Once this becomes more widely known I expect a flood of "tiny urls" and posts purely for the purpose of having those urls exposed where search engines will follow them.

Sorry, but "Tiny URL" links will no longer work and we may need to disable the links of other similar services as well.

If you want to place a link in your post you will need to use the real url.

Doug, do you mean Tiny URLs will be no more,or just that they will not be allowed on this website? I love Tiny URLs!

This is a great idea for us moderators. When a URL masking service like tinyurl is used, it's difficult to tell whether it's an affiliate link or just a regular link.

There's really not much reason to "mask" the url that someone is trying to promote, other than if they are trying to hide the fact that they are an affiliate and don't want it obvious that they are making money off the click in some manner.

Above I think that Doug meant that the use of tinyurl in the forums will be disallowed. Tinyurl will live on, but you won't see those links in the forums.

Thanks Doug !

Troy

^5. Thanks Doug.

But if you like Tiny links, I suggest trying adding a whole package of the small sausage links in a crock pot, with a regular size jar of barbecue sauce and a small jar of grape jelly. Let simmer for until the sausages are done! Now that is the only way we should be enjoying tiny links! LOL corny I know.

I don't mean to be a pain but I just wanted to make sure you posted the right URL. I just read an article on authoritydomain that came a few days ago. It says that several Url shorteners are using 302 redirects. Twurl.nl, hex.io, eweri, and fon.gs are all "dirty 301 redirects"

The article goes on to say that tinyurl, bit.ly, ff.im, and is.gd are all good examples of a clean 301 redirect.

Using bit.ly and using www.yoono.com is a perfect mix to kick off your social network. I like www.yoono.com because you can post in one place and aggregate your post to all your social platforms, like, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Bit.ly will allow you to see how many people click on your link. ( nice mix)

William Jimenez
www.Will2Design.com