Affiliates were asked “Are you currently using any URL Shortening Services in your marketing efforts?” for the latest Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.
The majority of respondents, at 59.6%, said no, and the remaining 40.4% indicated they do use URL shortening services.
There was a follow-up question, “If you answered YES to the question above, which URL Shortening Services are you actively using?”
bit.ly, which I use primarily, was the most popular with 42.5%, but it was closely followed by ow.ly at 38.5%. Nine other URL shortening services rounded out the results in the survey with tinyurl getting a tiny 1.8%.
A year or so ago, it seemed like everybody was using tinyurl. I was using cli.gs until they got hacked about a year ago.
I also use the Pretty Link plugin on WordPress to make convert affiliate links into shortened URLs when writing blog posts.
Over eleven-hundred and fifty affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2010 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.
More details on AffStat at http://affstat.com/.