Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Does Bitly hurt your SEO?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Does Bitly hurt your SEO?

    Technical SEO
    5
    9
    11586
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • StreetwiseReports
      StreetwiseReports last edited by

      I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ?

      If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • zeepartner
        zeepartner @brandonjschwartz last edited by

        the bots can easily identify a url shortener, as this performs a normal 301 redirect

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • StreetwiseReports
          StreetwiseReports @brandonjschwartz last edited by

          Thanks, but I am wondering how this is possible, unless the search bots could identify that it is a link shortener

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • brandonjschwartz
            brandonjschwartz @zeepartner last edited by

            You're probably right about the estimate. I haven't done any testing on it or the impact of redirects in general personally, but have seen some folks suggest as high as 99% but others much lower.

            StreetwiseReports zeepartner 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • zeepartner
              zeepartner @StreetwiseReports last edited by

              no, i'm referring to Boomajoom's comment above "only 99% of the rank instead of the full value".

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • StreetwiseReports
                StreetwiseReports @zeepartner last edited by

                thanks, what do you mean 99%. do you mean that it's 99% less effective?

                zeepartner 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • zeepartner
                  zeepartner last edited by

                  no, it won't hurt your SEO, but you will get less out of it than by linking directly. how much of the link juice flows is unclear, but my estimate is that it's much lower than 99%.

                  StreetwiseReports brandonjschwartz 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Workaholic
                    Workaholic last edited by

                    I see a lot of people use bitly, but I personally prefer using goo.gl, it's a Google product and it pretty much gives you the same metrics than bitly.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • brandonjschwartz
                      brandonjschwartz last edited by

                      Slightly. Like any redirect, you lose some of the link value. However, Google has said that PageRank does flow through shortened URL's. It just might only be 99% of the rank instead of the full value.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • sonic22

                        Will properly encoded & signs hurt or help me?

                        url encoding

                        Hello friends, Will properly encoding a url hurt my ranking after having it improperly coded? I want to change my & symbols to & If I go from:
                        http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=cool To:
                        http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=cool Will I get hurt if I make the leap?

                        Technical SEO | | sonic22
                        0
                      • Tiffany_Barn

                        # Tag - opacity and SEO impact

                        Hello,
                        I have a query animation 'fade-in-up' on my website: tiffanybarnard.com which moves the H1 tag slightly and fades it in from zero opacity to 1. Will this affect the SEO value of the H1 tag?
                        Thank you!

                        Technical SEO | | Tiffany_Barn
                        0
                      • Jason-Reid

                        How does changing sitemaps affect SEO

                        Hi all, I have a question regarding changing the size of my sitemaps. Currently I generate sitemaps in batches of 50k. A situation has come up where I need to change that size to 15k in order to be crawled by one of our licensed services. I haven't been able to find any documentation on whether or not changing the size of my sitemaps(but not the pages included in them) will affect my rankings negatively or my SEO efforts in general. If anyone has any insights or has experienced this with their site please let me know!

                        Technical SEO | | Jason-Reid
                        0
                      • bigrat95

                        Coming soon SEO

                        Hi, I was wondering what is the best practice to redirect all the links juice by redirecting all the pages of your website to a coming soon page. The coming soon page will point to the domain.com, not to a subfolder. Should I move the entire website to a subfolder and redirect this folder to the coming soon page? Thanks

                        Technical SEO | | bigrat95
                        0
                      • wearehappymedia

                        Target: blank. Does it make an SEO difference?

                        I've notice many sites MOZ included no longer use the target: blank attribute. I think that's what it's called. Basically when a link on your site opens a new tab in the browser as opposed to replacing the browser window you are in.  Given that MOZ think of everything, I would love to hear opinions on this.

                        Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia
                        0
                      • TeamacPaints

                        Can a CMS affect SEO?

                        As the title really, I run www.specialistpaintsonline.co.uk and 6 months ago when I first got it it had bad links which google had put a penalty against it so losts it value. However the penalty was lift in Sept, the site corresponds to all guidelines and seo work has been done and constantly monitored. the issue I have is sales and visits have not gone up, we are failing fast and running on 2 or 3 sales a month isn't enough to cover any sort of cost let alone wages. hence my question can the cms have anything to do with it? Im at a loss and go grey any help or advice would be great. thanks in advance.

                        Technical SEO | | TeamacPaints
                        0
                      • acs111

                        Are links in menus to external sites bad for SEO?

                        We're building a blog on a subdomain of the main site. The main site is on Shopify and the blog will be on wordpress. I'd like to keep the user experience as simple as possible so I'd like to make the blog look exactly like the main Shopify site. This means having a menu in the blog that duplicates the Shopify menu. So is it bad for SEO to have someone click on the 'about us' button in the blog subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) which takes you to the 'about us page' on the main shopify website (mainsite.com)?

                        Technical SEO | | acs111
                        0
                      • Scratch_MM

                        Does posting an article on multiple sites hurt seo?

                        A client of mine creates thought leadership articles and pitches multiple sites to host the article on their site to reach different audiences. The sites that pick it up are places such as AdAge and MarketingProfs and we do get link juice from these sources most of the time. Does having the same article on these sites as well as your own hurt your SEO efforts in any way? Could it be recognized as duplicate content? I know the links are great just wondering if there is any other side effects especially when there are no links provided! Thank you!

                        Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.