Blog
Notes on short links, QR codes and click measurement.
September 2, 2026
301 against 302 for short links
A permanent redirect is cached by the browser and can strand a printed link on an old destination. What a 302 with no-store costs, what it buys, and where a short link sits in a site's SEO.
September 2, 2026
The clicks that arrive before anyone clicks
A link pasted into a chat or an email collects requests within seconds, from preview crawlers, mail scanners and browser prefetch. Why a shortener sees them, and how each one is reported with its reason.
September 2, 2026
Setting up a custom domain for short links
Ownership is proved with a TXT record before a certificate is issued, routing is checked separately, and a link's domain is fixed at the moment the link is created.
September 2, 2026
What a free plan does to a short link
Free shortener plans cost something later in one of three places. An ad on the redirect, a monthly cap on new links, or links that stop resolving when the plan does. What to check, and what the free plan here does.
September 2, 2026
When a URL shortener shuts down
What the goo.gl timeline showed, and the three questions worth asking any shortener afterwards. What non-payment does to a link, whether the redirect is cacheable, and who owns the domain.
September 2, 2026
Short link clicks against Google Analytics
The gap between a shortener's click count and a session count on the destination is explainable line by line. A different vantage point, no session window, bots counted at the redirect, and a different day boundary.
September 2, 2026
Short links in SMS, and why shared domains get filtered
Carriers and messaging platforms treat public shortener domains as a spam signal. What that means for a campaign, why a shared domain is a shared reputation, and what changes on a domain the sender owns.
September 2, 2026
Static and dynamic QR codes
A static code carries the destination itself and freezes it at printing. A dynamic code carries a short link, which is what makes the destination editable afterwards and the scans countable at all.
September 2, 2026
What a URL shortener knows about the people who click
A redirect sees an address, a user agent, a referrer and a time. What is kept from that, what is discarded, how long the rest lives, and why the hash cannot be turned back into an address.
September 2, 2026
When a short link does not redirect
The checks a short link goes through before a redirect, the order they run in, which of them the owner controls, and why a spent allowance is never one of them.