Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Matt,

I use bit.ly links to get real-time tracking. Is there another way to do that? If so, I'm happy to change. Nobody is trying to trick anybody into anything.

If you'd like, how about a big notice at the top of the page that lets people know all links are referral links? There's already one on the main page. Would that make you feel better?

EDIT: I've updated all the pages to include a notice about all the outbound links. Since I still haven't heard anything as far as how to replace the real-time tracking bit.ly offers, it stays in there.

As far as the lack of comments, several HN'ers I know don't comment on SEO on here any more. People just get too irrational about it.

And I should have known better than to feed the comment trolls.

In theory you could get real time tracking with Mixpanel, but in practice their results seem to be an hour or two behind at least some of the time, so I'm not sure how that compares to bit.ly. It isn't free either.

What I'm using bit.ly for is looking at the distribution and response channels in real-time.

So if I post a link on Twitter, and then one on Facebook, and then one on HN? Bit.ly allows me to see which people are coming from where, how quickly, and what percentages of readers are getting any use from the links on the site. All at the same time.

I had already looked at Google (way too slow) and MixPanel (also too slow)

Somebody emailed me with some product -- clicky? Never heard of it before. I guess there are others?

I need to do some more research on what's out there. I had no idea bit.ly bothered people so much. To me it was an easy, free option that gave me cool real-time graphs. Aside from "breaking the internet", whatever that means, what's not to like? Honestly I still don't get it, but I'm happy to find something else.

I always glance at the link before clicking it because I like to see where it goes so I prefer direct links. However, I'm not particularly worried about bit.ly links.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com