SEO Tip #132: Do URL Shorteners Pass Anchor Text?
Matt Cutts: Custom URL shorteners are just like any other redirects; if we try to crawl a page and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which all well behaved URL shorteners like bitly or goo.gl will do, if we see that 301 it will pass PageRank to that destination.
In general there really shouldn’t be any harm to using custom URL shorteners in your SEO. The PageRank will flow through. Than anchor text will flow through and so I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that at all.
Now just to let you know for example if you look at Twitter’s webpages many of those links have a no follow link so those links that are on the webpage might not necessarily flow PageRank but we might be able to find out about those links through some other way, maybe a data feed or something like that.
But just URL shorteners as far as how they relate to SEO are not necessarily a problem at all. The vast majority of well-behaved URL shorteners have good up time and also pass PageRank and anchor text because they use a 301 redirect.
About the Author
Andy Johnson has been on the Internet since the its dawn(ie his first computer program was recorded on cassette tape) and his first hard drive cost about as much his current MacBook. His first byline was in 1993 for a local newspaper rag he eventually helmed, and his last “real job” was at a computer start up which ended when it ended. Throughout it all he’s freelanced and blogged. Now he is mesmerized by Search Engine Optimization forever trying to “rise to the top” for the right reasons. He’s been married to his wife Julia for as long as he can remember and has two lovely, wonderful children. He looks forward to sharing the latest in the technical best for all the online entrepreneurs.