Bit.Ly URL Shortener for SEO - Preventing Malware Infection from Bit.Ly URLs

Since bit.ly URLs disguise the original URL, there are times when this service gets abused by spammers and hackers to spread viruses and spam.

The following are the important tips for preventing infection and checking the integrity of the target URL of a certain given bit.ly URL:

Step 1. In order to know the 301 redirected/target URL of a bit.ly URL, you can use a server header status checker, such as the one you can find here: http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers  

Step 2. Enter the bit.ly URL in the text box and then press "Check Server Headers."

Step 3. The result will then show the redirected URL under #2 Server Response:

Example:

#1 Server Response: http://bit.ly/UNHP5 ====> This is the source URL

HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved

Server: nginx/0.7.42

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:08:53 GMT

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Connection: keep-alive

Location: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Length: 305

Redirect Target: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

#2 Server Response: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ ==> TARGET URL

HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Expires: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:08:53 GMT

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:08:53 GMT

Last-Modified: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:01:26 GMT

ETag: "70708e3d-e377-4d66-bd4f-0c2757d0ea74"

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

Server: GSE

Cache-Control: public, max-age=0, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate

Age: 0

Transfer-Encoding: chunked

=================

Summary

The following are the source and target URLs based on the above report:

Source URL : http://bit.ly/UNHP5

Target URL: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Step 4: You will then need to check to see if the target URL is clean. You will need to use Google's Safe Browsing service, and simply replace "REPLACETHISWITHYOURDOMAIN.COM" with your exact domain name:

This is the exact URL:http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=REPLACETHISWITHYOURDOMAIN.COM

So in the example above,

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

Step 5: You can determine whether the page or domain is malicious because it will be shown under "What is the current listing status for googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com?"

If the site is NOT currently suspicious, then it is safe to browse.

Other important SEO related statistics

You already know how to determine the clicks data based on the detailed statistics provided by bit.ly URL by adding a "+" at the end of its URL.

Now, using the same method for getting statistics, you can also determine in which country your website is very popular in terms of bit.ly click statistics.

Under "Traffic" click "Location" and then click "Total" (see example here: http://www.php-developer.org/screenshot/bitlystatistics.jpg )

From an SEO perspective, it shows that the country is the geographic target of the website or where the website is officially located or based (where it gets the most click through).

Other surprising statistics that you can get from bit.ly are the number of tweets, number of shares and likes in Facebook, number of BT comments, and other essential marketing statistics that can be hard to get in one place.

You can see those statistics beside "conversions." Example: http://www.php-developer.org/screenshot/bitlystatistics.jpg