Over the past few months I have managed to keep myself entertained and informed concerning link popularity – on my own site – using one of or a combination of the following services and utilities. Two of these utilities are offered free of charge and in many ways, allow users to gain a better grasp of user activity on any given web page.

Although comments can be used as a means to gauge user interest in content, link poplarity and tracking statistics offer a valuable means to gauge a sites design & useability.

Crazyegg heat map & overlays

Having had the opportunity to test the early beta release of Crazyegg through its recent public launch, I can recommend, with confidence, the service for its informative, yet simple to use interface and tracking prowess. Crazyegg presents users with visual representation of site activity through convenient heatmaps, click overlays, or statistics based lists.

Early beta users were limited to tracking single pages and often discovered numerous incompatibilities with certain scripts. The recent release has since matured into a multi-page monitoring service which is offered as a free or subscription model service. Free account users are able to track up to 4 pages or a total of 5,000 clicks/mo. Plans increase up to PRO level users with a monthly limit of 250,000 clicks/mo. & an unlimited number of trackable pages.

PROS: Receive exhaustive visual-aids – heatmaps, overlays, and lists. Heatmaps are especially helpful for site admins who question the usability of any given page. Track where users are clicking – on or around navigation bars. Archive heatmaps for comparison with later data.

CONS: Free account holders will blow through their alloted limit in a week or two. Realistically, medium traffic sites should upgrade to the $49/mo. plan for decent tracking results. Not self-hosted.

Shorty self-hosted redirects

In two short weeks, Shorty, a self-hosted alternative to services such as TinyURL or URL123, has proven itself to be an invaluable utility for content deployment and tracking. Check out my previous review of the utility: Shorty – Your own TinyURL generator.

Not surprisingly, I found myself implementing the redirecting utility to create custom links which are not only cleaner to look at, but offer the convenience of visitor click tracking. Despite the fact that this early beta release can easily become overwhelming [with the number of Shorty created links], the admin panel offers livesearch functionality for drilling through previously created links.

PROS: Clean and simple. If all you’re looking for is the number of clicks a link receives, Shorty offers those statistics on top of being a great solution for cleaning bloated URLs. Self-hosted.

CONS: Shorty’s usefulness as a self-hosted URL redirecting service supersedes any and all usefulness as a link campaign tracking service.

Enhancing Mint with Link Spice

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of an “analytical” package – with style – is Shaun Inman’s Mint. Mint’s standard functionality can be improved tenfold thanks to a great assortment of Peppers (“plugins”). The choices are exhaustive, just visit Peppermint Tea for a collection of third party Mint Peppers.

One such gem which will improve upon the functionality of Mint is the Link Spice Pepper by Craig Mod. Although a bit more tedious to implement, Link Spice is a more suitable alternative to the previous aforementioned solutions due to the fact that campaigns are displayed alongside your favorite Peppers – rather than visiting external pages. Of course, this all assumes that you are running Mint as your analytical package.

Campaigns are created by appending a unique string to the end of links within your HTML documents. Link Spice then collects links and creates tracking campaigns which are displayed within your local Mint install.

PROS: Current Mint users will no longer feel the urge to implement additional third-party solutions for tracking link campaigns. Create campaigns further organized using “tags”. Self-hosted.

CONS: In order for Link Spice to work, links must be appended with additional characters which creates “messy” URLs – “utm_campaign” and “utm_term”. In addition, Link Spice requires Mint. Don’t have Mint installed? Don’t bother…

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The critical difference between Shorty and TinyURL is that Shorty resides on your server. You install it (all you need is a MySQL database and PHP) and you then have the power of TinyURL and its ilk, but rather than being tied to a third party, it’s a part of your brand.

Seeing as though Shorty – a self hosted solution – was too enticing to pass-up, I quickly downloaded the latest public beta release for comparison. The installation was a breeze:

• Create or utilize an existing database (recommend that you create a new one). Dreamhost users, log into the DH Panel, navigate to Goodies > Manage MySQL > Create a new MySQL database. Edit the configuration.php file within the distribution.
• Upload the ‘shorty’ directory to your web server.
• Run the included installer http://yourdomain.com/shorty/_install.php
• When prompted, enter your desired user account details.
• For those that receive an error reporting a missing .htaccess file, Reed has noted a small tip for adding the required rewrite rules.
• As directed, remove the _install.php file from the directory for security reasons.

Once you’ve logged into your local installation of Shorty, you’ll be presented with three tabs: Auto, Keywords, and Random. Each of these tabs facilitates the process of shortening long URLs into shorter, more manageable alternatives.

• Auto – Specify the URL to be shortened, add a keyword to the URL structure, and select ‘Get Shorty’ to receive a shortened URL with the specified keyword. You can opt to elect that Auto be the preferred Shorty method for shortening URLs.
• Keywords – Enter multiple keywords to be included for shortened URLs. Again, users may opt to elect ‘Keywords’ as the preferred URL shortening method.
• Random – The plain vanilla method of shortening URLs. Simple paste the URL to be shortened and receive a ‘Shorty’ version. Probably the best choice for those in search of a local version of TinyURL or the like.

In addition to offering users with a means in which to create clean, short, and concise links, Shorty offers a make-shift solution for tracking link usage. Users who have Shorty installed locally can check out the ‘Admin’ panel which offers a running list of Shorty converted URLs complete with livesearch to find specific links.

Despite being a beta release, Shorty is rock solid. Gone are the days of relying on third-party URL shortening services. Hello Shorty, where have you been all this time? Download your own copy of Shorty and continue increasing the exposure of your own domain while passing out URLs. I am certain that third-party URL shortening service will cease to profit or exist thank to Shorty.

Informative read? Consider a healthy digg to spread the word concerning this fantastic self-hosted URL shortening solution.