URL Shortener with Link Management

Delivr's URL Shortener with Link Management goes far beyond creating shortlinks and click tracking. Delivr is a true link management platform offering a secure, flexible and reliable service that doesn't just shorten a link, but allows you to manage your short URLs across all aspects of the marketing and print media ecosystem.

While there are a host of differences between Delivr and other platforms that offer short URLs, the most significant features that set Delivr apart from the pack are two features that the Google URL Shortener never offered — the ability to edit the destination of a short URL and 100% private and secure reporting.

TOP 10 REASONS TO CONSIDER DELIVR AS YOUR GOO.GL ALTERNATIVE

1. Editable Links & Destination URLs

Once a URL is shortened at goo.gl, the destination can not be changed. At Delivr, all shortened links are dynamic. You can change your short URL destinations at any time and as often as you want — even if your marketing material has already been printed or shared. This will save reprinting costs, effort and enable you to respond to any changes in the campaign as quickly as possible. In addition, select Delivr plans provide intelligent link routing by operating system, geolocation and language. Further, with our support of Google Analytics UTM parameters, you can easily append Google® Analytics campaign parameters to your destination URL.

2. Smart URL Redirection

Delivr provides an smart URL feature that allows you to create a short link that contains multiple destination links. By implementing advanced redirect rules, you can achieve optimal results by intelligently redirecting users based on mobile operating system, geolocation or language.

3. QR Codes

Although you were able to create QR codes with Goo.gl, Delivr provides the ability to generate them in vector format and also track QR scans. This is an effective way to analyze your QR code’s performance. Delivr is one of a handful of companies worldwide licensed by DENSO. DENSO, part of the Toyota Group, is a world leader in automatic data capture technology and the inventor of the QR Code®. Through this relationship, Delivr offers a compelling new generation of services that transform the use of the conventional QR code and takes QR codes to a higher level of intelligence, security and customer experience.

4. Powerful Tools & Analytics

Both Delivr and Google provide the analytical tools to see how well your shared links are doing online. Delivr has a lot of advanced features and tools over Google. Delivr provides smart analytics tools that enable you to experience in real time how a shared link is performing. By using different links to A/B test each CTA’s views, you can determines the best channels, times to post, and types of content in order to reach and engage consumers. In addition, we provide hosted, easy to launch mobile-friendly landing pages and an amazing QR Code Generator with QR code management. And unlike Goo.gl, with Delivr you can organize your links in groups. Links can be placed in one or more groups. Summary reports showing aggregated activity across the group become available immediately. This is especially useful if you’re working on several projects at once and need an easy way to keep track of campaign performance.

5. Branded Short Domains

Delivr provides options for branded short domains which replaces the generic “delivr.com” part of your shortened links with a custom domain of your own. This helps extend your brand and increase your clicks and engagement over standard short URLs. The Google URL Shortener does not provide this feature.

6. Privacy & Confidentiality

Google provides analytics in public mode only. Therefore, anyone who has the shortened link can access to all the information regarding that link by adding "+" at the end of the Google link. One of the biggest advantages of the Delivr URL Shortener is that all click data is secure and 100% private by default. Delivr ensures increased privacy of your data with private statistics under password protection. You can also choose to share reports without giving access to your Delivr account through shareable links.

7. Safety & Security

Abuse decreases significantly when Delivr shortener links are used due to a combination of automated and human security reviews of shortened links. See Delivr's Safe Browsing Transparency Report.

In addition, all Delivr short URLs are placed under HTTPS. SSL is essential for protecting your links, and even if they don’t contain sensitive information, it provides users with privacy and allows them to place trust in your brand. If you want people to click through to your website, using HTTPS URLs will give them peace of mind and let them know from the outset that your online business is one that can be trusted. This is particularly important if you want visitors to make payments or purchases on your website. And the way HTTPS is becoming the norm today, many people expect professional links to be shared with HTTPS. The more trust you can build, the better. Sharing HTTPS links is also particularly useful if you are publishing a link on a secure SSL page. If you use insecure links on one of your secure web pages and content is loaded from a non-HTTPS page, your web browser will warn that there is some page content that is insecure. Web privacy browser extensions will kick up a fuss too.

This feature is included in all our subscriptions. When you create a short URL, the traffic to your content will automatically be encrypted. There’s no configuration needed, we’ll handle it all for you. And if you’d prefer to use your own SSL certificate, get in touch with us and we can help you set that up.

8. Amazing Customer Support

Feel free to contact us whenever you need our help. Managed support plans are also available. We're also building a network of highly qualified professionals and companies to provide custom solutions.

9. Deep Experience

Delivr is a marketing technology platform used by thousands of businesses to drive audiences from print to digital experiences. The Delivr team has built and managed SaaS platforms that thousands of businesses use and millions of people engage with.

10. Get Immediate Results with No Risk or Obligation

Join thousands of companies using Delivr to shorten URLs, generate QR codes, manage links, build mobile landing pages and track engagement.  All inclusive pricing. No setup fees or contracts. Switch plans or cancel at any time.

A URL Shortener is an online application that converts a regular URL (a web address) into a condensed format. The user only has to copy the full URL of a website and paste it into a URL shortening tool to come up with an abbreviated version. A URL Shortener allows users to shorten very long links into shorter ones that are better suited for e-mailing, instant messaging, QR code or NFC Tag encoding and for services that restrict character counts.  Other uses of URL shortening are to "beautify" a link and track clicks.

Often regular unshortened links may be aesthetically unpleasing. Many web developers pass descriptive attributes in the URL to represent data hierarchies, command structures, transaction paths or session information. Marketing departments and their ad agencies add campaign parameters. This can result in URLs that are hundreds of characters long and that contain complex character patterns. Such URLs are difficult to memorize, type-out or distribute. As a result, long URLs must be copied-and-pasted for reliability. Thus, short URLs may be more convenient for websites or hard copy publications (e.g. a printed magazine or a book), the latter often requiring that very long strings be broken into multiple lines (as is the case with some e-mail software or internet forums) or truncated.

On Twitter and some instant-messaging services, there is a limit to the number of characters a message can carry. Using a URL shortener can allow linking to web pages which would otherwise violate this constraint. Delivr generates Short URLs that are friendly and human-readable.

URLs encoded in two-dimensional barcodes such as QR code are shortened by Delivr's URL shortener in order to reduce the printed area of the code and allow printing at lower density (less complexity) in order to improve scanning reliability.

Delivr provides detailed information on the clicks a link receives, which can be simpler than setting up an equally powerful server-side analytics engine.

Delivr can host your own branded short domain. Your domain replaces the “delivr.com” in your links.

No, our URL shortener doesn’t hurt SEO (Search Engine Optimization). We use only 301 redirects that transfers all the SEO power to your page. Actually, it can help your SEO – the better you promote your content, the more backlinks you might collect from users who share your link.

Link Shorteners allow you to tag and track your links effectively. With our analytics and UTM parameters you can easily see which links get more clicks and which marketing campaigns perform better. Use this information to optimize your campaigns for better results.

Delivr link management goes far beyond creating shortlinks and click tracking — the Delivr platform is secure, agile and incredibly flexible to power your mobile and social marketing.

Delivr is a true link management platform offering a flexible, reliable service that doesn't just shorten a link, but allows you to manage your short URLs across all aspects of the marketing and media ecosystem.

While there are a host of differences between us and other platforms that offer short URLs, the most significant features that set us apart from the pack is the ability to edit a short URL and 100% private and secure reporting. Learn more about Link Management.

URL Shortening is convenient for any of the reasons why a friendly URL may be desired, such as for messaging services that limit the number of characters in a message (for example, SMS), for reducing the amount of typing required if the reader is copying a URL from a print source, for making it easier for a person to remember, or for the intention of a permalink. Other uses of URL shortening are to "beautify" a link, track clicks, or disguise the underlying address.

URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect, often on a domain name that is even shorter than the original one, which links to the web page that has a long URL.

Append Google Analytics  Campaign Parameters (UTM) to your Destination URL under the "Campaign Parameters" tab when editing your Short URL. Using this method, you can edit and manage these parameters at anytime without needing to generate a new Short URL.

Campaign Source
utm_source
Use to identify the website or publication sending the traffic e.g., newsletter, linkedin

Campaign Medium
utm_medium
Use to identify the kind of advertising medium e.g., email, social, print

Campaign Name
utm_campaign
Use to identify the name of the campaign e.g., product-launch-2017, blog-post-may-2017

Campaign Term
utm_term
Use to identify the paid keywords (Skip this for Google AdWords if you have connected your AdWords and Analytics accounts and use the auto-tagging feature) e.g., paid-keyword-1, paid-keyword-2

Campaign Content
utm_content
Use to differentiate ads (Suggested for additional details for A/B testing and content-targeted ads) e.g., YYYYMMDD, cta-top-banner, cta-sidebar

Your campaign parameters are not added to the  visible Short URL itself. Rather, the parameters are automatically added to the Long URL/Destination URL on redirection . Alternatively, you  can include campaign parameters as part of the Long URL you are shortening.

The Destination URL entered MUST be the same URL that you have Google Analytics installed on NOT a a shortened URL e.g. a bit.ly URL.

Using Mixpanel?

Mixpanel's JavaScript library automatically detects utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, and utm_term if they are present in your URL, and sets them as super properties.  Optionally, we provide a method to append Coremetrics Campaign Parameters to your Destination URL with Coremetrics installed.

We currently don't allow Data URL scheme. Data URL is a way to encode all page content in the URL.

Click to see example:
data:text/html,<b>Sample%20Page</b>

Yes, if you select to prompt users for their Device GPS Location and users provide permission to allow to send this information to Delivr.

Precision of the location data varies. If the user’s device (smartphone or another device) supports GPS and is able to report this to delivr.com – which also means that the geolocation using GPS is enabled for a given code on the Delivr user’s account and that the user of the device used to scan the code agreed to allow the location information to be sent to delivr.com – the location information can be rather precise, often within the error margin smaller than one meter (three feet). However, the error margin could be higher. This is why delivr.com reports feature a circle around each location that illustrates possible actual location based on the margin of error. The smaller the circle, the more precise the location information is.

If the geolocation using GPS is not enabled, the location is less precise as it is based on the known location of the IP address of the device. The IP address of the device is typically associated with the network that the device is connected to, and such associated location may sometimes be miles away from the actual location of the device at the time. A good example are Blackberry devices, that all get their IP address from a Blackberry gateway and majority of these gateways are in Canada; so even a Blackberry device located in Caribbean could receive a Canadian IP address.

Delivr uses two methods to locate the End User’s device: the IP address method and the Device GPS Location method (where GPS stands for Global Positioning System).

The Device GPS Location method requires permission from the End-user to allow End-user’s device to send the location information to Delivr (delivr.com).

The IP address method is based on the public IP address that the End-user’s device is using when the End-user clicks through a short link, or scans a QR Code, taps a NFC tag, or interacts with a Delivr-supported technology in some other way. This public IP address is typically based on the network that the End-user’s device is connected to. It can be a mobile operator (carrier) network, a Wi-Fi network, or an organization or a company network. The important consequence of this is that the location associated with that public IP address is typically the location of the network element such as a gateway, or a router, which may or may not be located in close proximity of the End-user’s device. In majority of cases, the location information obtained this way is accurate to the state or city level, but it is important to note that this is not always the case.  An example: an End-user travelling to Europe might be accessing the Internet through his WiFi access point connected to his company’s main network in US via a secure VPN connection while scanning a QR code in her hotel room; as the public IP address of End-user’s device will be in US, the location registered by Delivr will be in US as well. If that same End-user disconnects from her company’s VPN, connects to the mobile network and scans the same QR code, this new scan will now be registered with  a European location of the IP address of the European mobile operator’s network that her device connected to.

The Device GPS Location method involves Delivr getting the most precise GPS location data (latitude and longitude) directly from the End-user’s device at the time of interaction (click, scan or tap). The End-user must provide permission to allow her device to send the information to Delivr; if the End-user denies such permission, Delivr falls back to the IP address method. The accuracy of the GPS location data is reliable and much more accurate than the location data obtained through the IP address method. It is network-independent, so regardless of the accuracy the location represents the actual location of the End-user’s device at the time of the action. The accuracy is not always the same; it typically varies depending on the End-user’s device GPS receiver quality, environmental conditions including cell size, atmospheric effects and obstructions to get strong  GPS satellite signals.  Real-world data collected by the FAA (US Federal Aviation Administration) show that the accuracy of GPS devices is increasing.  Many modern devices with GPS can potentially have better than 1 meter (3 feet) horizontal accuracy.

FAA data collected in early 2011 shows that the horizontal accuracy of GPS SPS is often within ~1 m

Yes. Delivr's URL Shortening servcies can be integrated into your platform or dashboard with our API. The API offers a typical RESTful interface and all calls are available in two formats: JSON and XML. The Delivr API is available as an add-on to Delivr ENTERPRISE. | Contact us.

There are several key differences between Delivr and other platforms that offer URL shortening, namely Bitly and Google URL Shortener. The three most significant features that Delivr offers is:

1. The ability to edit a Short URL.
   • Delivr offers unprecedented control to edit, intelligently route and manage your short URL redirections and destinations. Bitly and Google short URLs can not be editied.
2. 100% data security.
   • Delivr short URLs provide 100% private and secure click data and reporting. Bitly and Google short URLs and click analytics are public and can be accessed by anyone.
3. The ability to change the operation of your Short URL from a URL redirection to a mobile-frendly landing page hosted at Delivr/

All Short URLs have a corresponding QR code image. You will see a link for downloading the QR code for your Short URL on your Account Dashboard.

You can change the destination of the Short URL that you've created at anytime. You must be logged in to your Account Dashboard:

1. Sign into your Account Dashboard: https://delivr.com/signin
2. Click "Edit" for the link that you want to change
3. Update the URL in the Destination URL field and SAVE.

You can also view reports for your Short URLs  and otherwsie manage them from your Account Dashboard.

Yes, with Delivr PRO and Delivr ENTERPRISE. Under these plans, your Short URLs can use a branded short domain (or subdomain). Branded short domains replace the “delivr.com” in your links with your brand name.

The expiration for a Short URL under the Delivr FREE plan is one year from creation date or 1000 views, which ever comes first. For continued use an upgrade to a monthy subscription plan is required.

Delivr PLUS, Delivr PRIME, Delivr VIP, Delivr PRO, and Delivr ENTERPRISE Short URLs do NOT expire under an active paid subscription plan.

Currently, it is not possible to set an expiration date for a shortened link, but if your account is associated to your Short URL, you will be able to delete or deactivate (pause) the Short URL if you want.

The role of redirects in dynamic QR codes.

Dynamic QR codes are encoded with a managed Short URL that redirects to you Destination URL, providing three key benefits:

1. Allows changing the destination of the code after printing
2. Reduces the size & complexity of the code, which results in faster scanning
3. Provides management and tracking

Delivr uses a "302 redirect" in the managed Short URL.

What is a 302 redirect?

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect that indicates the requested resource has been temporarily moved to a new URL. This temporary nature of a 302 redirect is a core requirement and best practice for dynamic QR codes.

Here is a general overview of how this process works:

1. The user enters a Long (Destination) URL into Delivr's Dynamic QR Code Generator.
2. The QR Code Generator generates a unique, shortened URL for the Destination URL and saves both URLs in a database.
3. The QR Code Generator encodes the managed Short URL in the QR code.
4. When a user scans the QR code (or clicks on the managed Short URL), the server responds with a 302 status code and the Destination URL in the response header.
5. The user's browser then automatically redirects to the Destination URL. Redirection is the process of forwarding one URL to a different URL.

Advantages of using 302 redirects

The usage of 302 redirects offers several benefits:

• 302 redirects allow you to alter or update the redirection in the future without affecting any current links utilizing the managed Short URL. e.g., You have a temporary promotion and want to redirect your QR code to a unique landing page.
• 302 redirects allow you to measure clicks on the managed Short URL. Because the user's browser instantly redirects to the original URL, the URL shortening service can track how often the Short URL is clicked and utilize this data for analytics. 
• 302 redirects allow you to intelligently route (redirect) users to the desired link based on their device OS, preferred language, or location.
• 302 redirects allow you to A/B split-test the design and functionality of a new landing page.
• 302 redirects positively impacts SEO as a 302 redirect leaves link equity and page rank in place. e.g., preserving backlinks, providing flexibility, improving user experience, and speeding up the redirect process.

Do 302 redirects hurt SEO performance?

No. According to the public relations team at Google, the ultimate SEO impact between 301 and 302 redirects is small. Google's John Mueller explains that the search engine will see the use of a 302 temporary redirect as a reason for Googlebot to come back and check the original page.

Here's how Google has publicly described the difference between 301 and 302 redirects:

 "What's the difference between 301 and 302 redirects? Well, both send users onward; the difference is subtle but small. A 301 is a permanent redirect, so the destination is what we keep. A 302 is a temporary redirect, so we'll come back to the start to double-check. They're just different ways of redirecting. Use the right kind when you can but don't worry about magical SEO dust. Both work fine."

The truth is that there is very little difference between 301 and 302 redirects in SEO. In terms of PageRank, the Google ranking algorithm treats all 300-level redirects the same – as has been confirmed by Google – and SEO ranking authority is preserved in all cases Google's John Mueller ensures that it's best to "use the right kind when you can but don't worry about magical SEO dust. Both work fine". All 300-level server-side redirects pass PageRank to the destination page.

Why should dynamic QR codes avoid using 301 redirects?

A 301 redirect is permanent, indicating that the original Destination URL is permanent. When using a dynamic QR code, your destination is adjustable, allowing you to change it anytime without reprinting it.

For example, you may need to connect your QR code to a specific campaign, event, or other transitory purpose that will change in the future. In this case, when a 301 redirect is utilized, various network services may route your audience to the original link long after the campaign or event has concluded and the link updated, resulting in a bad user experience.

No, the Short URL that is generated by Delivr's URL Shortener is NOT case sensitive. So if your Short URL is "http://delivr.com/abcde" (lower case), then "HTTP://DELIVR.COM/ABCDE" (upper case) will also work.