Live Oak Blog

I’ve heard this statement a couple of times and I know I’ll hear it again. “I can do what BudURL does with TinyURL and Google Analytics.”

While this statement is true, what a pain! You have to create a page on your web server that collects the inbound link, add the Google Anatlyics tracking code to the page, and then go to TinyURL to create a short URL of the desired page. Then, once the click is “collected” you have to wait for Google Analytics to process this data (usually overnight). Then, when you see the number of page views you collected, you aren’t seeing which referrers were used, which networks, cities, etc. All you’ll end up getting is the quantity of clicks you received. This is assuming you understand how to create pages on your server (if you have access) and that you know how to use Google Analytics (again, if you have access).

Here is why BudURL is better than just TinyURL + Google Analytics.

To do this same process, you simply navigate to the page you want to track and click the BudURL bookmarklet in your toolbar. The URL is converted and automatically added to your list of BudURLs and tracking is automatic. As clicks are made on your BudURL, we track the click count the moment it happens (stats are real-time) and we also pick up all kinds of detail about your click so we can tell you that the tweet you posted Twitter got picked up by Facebook and Google and Yammer and spread like wildfire via email. We can tell you which geographies around the world think your link is important and we can tell you this right now. You don’t have to wait until tomorrow to find out. In fact, you can log into your account, click on the Click Stream tab, and watch the clicks as they flow through.

There is a lot more coming in the next few weeks that will take tracking clicks both on and off the web even easier. Sure, you can do this with TinyURL and Google Analytics, but who would want to do it?