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I suppose for url shorteners to go away, the web standards should provide for some way to provide content providers with statistics. That is what URL shorteners
by Tichy 14y ago
I suppose for url shorteners to go away, the web standards should provide for some way to provide content providers with statistics. That is what URL shorteners are most often used for, and until there exist alternatives, they'll continue to be used.
Wasn't there even an attribute on links for a while, which created an outcry because it would send statistics of clicks to another URL? Don't remember the details. I understand why it created an outcry, but the fact is, people will be tracked no matter what :-(
- calpaterson 14y agoDo you mean the "Referer" header? It's still used, but HTTPS often doesn't pass it.
- raverbashing 14y agoNo Referer works for the 'end of the link' (the webserver serving the page) Bitly and others provide statistics on the 'clicking' of the link, that is, the amount of people that clicked the link (usually published on social media, but not necessarily, by someone that's not the original content host). That's the impact they're trying to measure. And sometimes it is the content host that published these links, because of a limited capability in deriving these statistics server side (even though Google Analytics goes a long way)
- Tichy 14y agoThe problem with Referer is that only the server/host get's to see it. Often people publish their stuff on other people's platform, and can't access the stats.