How to shorten a URL (and when not to)

A short link is an alias, not a copy. It points at the long URL and keeps pointing there until it expires or gets deleted — which is exactly why it's useful for some things and a bad idea for others.

Last updated: September 2026 · 6 min read

What actually happens when someone clicks

When a visitor opens sh0rt.biz/your-link, our server looks the code up and answers with a redirect to the destination. The visitor's browser then loads the real page. Nothing about the destination is duplicated, cached on our side, or modified — if the destination page moves or disappears, the short link dies with it.

Two details matter in practice:

• The redirect is temporary (HTTP 302). Browsers are explicitly told not to cache it, so if you delete a link later, the next click immediately hits our "link not found" page instead of a stale copy in someone's browser cache. That's deliberate: a shortener you can't correct is worse than no shortener.
• Redirects are counted only when you ask. Click tracking is off by default. With tracking on, each visit increments a counter and stores a timestamp; you view the numbers through a private stats link that's shown once after creation. No accounts, no dashboards, no email.

Making the link work for you

The one field worth spending a moment on is the custom slug — the part after the slash. A few habits from practice:

• Keep it readable. team-retreat-2026 tells a person something before they click; a7Xk2p tells them nothing and gets the same trust as any random link.
• Use lowercase words with hyphens. Underscores and mixed case work technically, but they're easy to mistype when someone copies a link off a screen by hand.
• Reuse a namespace, not a number. If you're printing several links for one project, prefix them (menu-march, menu-april) instead of numbering them (link1, link2) — it keeps older material understandable when someone finds it months later.

For anything time- or quantity-bound, set an expiry: after N days or after N clicks. A guest-WiFi link that dies after 30 days is one fewer credential floating around; a coupon link that stops after 500 clicks quietly closes itself when the campaign ends.

Where short links earn their keep

• Print and QR codes. A QR code's density grows with the URL length. A 40-character link encodes into a visibly simpler code than 200 characters of tracking parameters — and simpler codes scan more reliably from a distance, in poor light, or on a small sticker.
• Readable things you say out loud. On a call or in a classroom, "sh0rt.biz/slides" beats a URL with three query parameters. If people will type it instead of clicking it, shorten it and give it a spoken-friendly slug.
• Links with a natural end. Job postings, event pages, seasonal menus, application forms that close — expiry expresses what is already true and stale links clean themselves up.
• Coarse engagement checks. "Did anyone actually open this?" is a legitimate question that a click counter answers well enough. "Who exactly, and what else do they do?" is a question it does not answer — see the guide on what link statistics collect.

When not to shorten

Shorteners concentrate trust in the redirector. That's fine when that trust is deserved, and a problem when it isn't — so a few honest limits:

• Never shorten a link you can't vouch for. Passing along a short link means vouching for wherever it goes, now and after any future edit. If you didn't create it and can't inspect the destination, don't forward it.
• When the domain is part of the message, keep it visible. A link to a government portal, a bank, or a large brand carries meaning in its domain name. Shortening it hides exactly the signal people should be checking — and puts your mail in the same bucket as phishing, which loves shorteners for the same reason.
• Shorteners are opaque to email filters. Some spam systems score opaque redirects poorly. If a message matters, a full, recognizable URL often delivers more reliably.
• No SEO benefit. Search engines follow short links like any redirect, so shortening neither helps nor hides a link in rankings. Don't use a shortener to "clean up" a URL you're publishing as content — publish the real one.

Sensible defaults

If you want a rule of thumb: shorten for the medium (print, speech, chat), set expiry when the link has a natural end, leave tracking off unless you'll actually read the numbers, and switch on the preview page whenever the recipient has a reason to be suspicious. That covers almost every good case — and quietly avoids most of the bad ones.