Bitly Launches Search Platform & Reputation Monitoring For Shortened Links

Bitly currently is the leader in shortned URLs, minimizing 80 million URLs each day. Not only is Bitly shrinking URLs, but they are now “crawling & classifying” each shortened URL thanks to a a new social search platform. An index has since been created that will allow searchers to view the most distributed, viral and highest clicked links on the web.

Currently these results can be seen when using the new “reputation monitoring” tool that is being released to enterprise users; a traditional search engine will not accompany this platform.

Bitly makes a case for their real-time search using “onStar” as an example as the company faced some controversy last month:

The results shown are reminiscent of Topsy, one of the leading real-time search engines. However Topsy is a true social search engine and pulls in posts and comments as well as just links:

One of the largest reasons that I believe this search platform will be valuable is the wealth of proprietary click data that Bitly has to offer. While most social search platforms simply see shares, Bitly has the power to tie in the most “frequently clicked” results as well.  Bitly also stated the following about their release:

“… instead of pagerank we’re using a different filter — for any given search query, we display the stories that we predict will get the most attention over the next 24 hours. Then we use bitly’s analytics to refine our predictions in realtime. Our search technology is based on the the most valuable measure of engagement: the click.”

Bitly will be launching this social search powered reputation management functionality for enterprise users within the next two weeks. Follow the Bitly enterprise blog for more information on the social search platform.