Owl.li Is Ranking Above My Own Page! What To Do? Whooo To Blame?

Preface: How Normal URL Shorteners Work Hang tight, folks! Before we get into the whooo-done-it part of this post, here's a basic illustration of how URL shorteners work. It's pretty simple actually, on the surface. You need a short domain name (like bit.ly - which is possible because of the .ly extension) A random URL (or custom "vanity" if you choose) is created on the short domain like bit.ly/h1oiSn/ or bity.ly/example-url/ (both fake) A visit to that URL sends the user via 301 redirect or 302 redirect to the page it's linked to. Here's a real example of a URL I recently shortened with Bitly: See? NORMAL. And Bit.ly uses a 301 redirect which is also most liked, since 301's pass link equity. And the Bitly URL should (ideally) never rank above the final "real" URL. Danny Sullivan's post, although a bit outdated now, shows (of the shorteners from that time) which services use 301s and which use 302s. Note that he highly advises against the use of URLs with 302s. Remember that for later :-) If you want to examine more details before we begin, you can check out the wikipedia page on URL shortening. However, the point of this post is to analyze a particular SERP which returns a shortened URL instead of the normal URL. Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ti67f0gQsYE/url-shortener-owl-li-indexed-in-google?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email