Today's ubiquitous URL shorteners take seen a dramatic increment in popularity the last couple of years – much of it driven by the rise in popularity of Twitter itself. They are great for keeping character count at a minimum or to make sharing easier. Some fifty-fifty bring a few unique features to the tabular array, like enabling statistics or the power to select your own keyword, but as convenient as shorteners are they also introduce some new issues.

There's significant variance from one service to another when it comes to uptime, for example, while on the other hand given that the process involves using an HTTP redirect there'southward as well the latency upshot. Just perhaps more than importantly is the fact that they obscure the target accost and thus may be used to trick users to an unexpected destination.

This ways users are susceptible to something as innocent as beingness rickrolled to potentially much more harmful exposure, similar beingness redirected to scamming websites or malware-ridden pages. Fortunately, at that place are several ways to peek behind a shortened URL to come across exactly where the link will take y'all earlier clicking it, so let's take a quick look at a few of them.

Checking brusk URLs manually

All major URL shortening services offer an selection to preview what's behind their links, and then yous tin know exactly what you lot are visiting and thus avoid surprises. Shortening services bit.ly and Google'south own goo.gl, for example, will evidence you additional stuff similar total clicks, a QR code, shares on social networking sites and the fully expanded URL, just by appending a plus sign at the finish of the shortened address (https://flake.ly/gULvsR+).

Is.gd does the same thing by adding a hyphen at the end of the URL (https://is.gd/jatQq-), while on TinyURL you can run across where the link leads past prefixing the word "preview" to the front of the URL (https://preview.tinyurl.com/32jre2o). These are the most commonly used services just a more comprehensive list can exist found hither.

Unfortunately not all services offering the ability to preview the original address earlier visiting it. If someone else sends you a shortened link from one of these sites and you desire to preview information technology, you may still exist able to do so using a third-party service. ExpandMyURL.com and LongURL offer this functionality.

Automating the procedure: Browser add together-ons and bookmarklets

The above options are fine for checking the occasional link simply when you're dealing with shortened URLs on a regular footing information technology's better to automate this process rather than editing links manually or copying them to another website. Firefox users can save a lot of time through a elementary extension.

Bit.ly offers its own service-specific add-on only if you desire to embrace the full spectrum of URL shorteners get the one provided by Long URL Please.

Google Chrome besides has two extensions available that aggrandize shortened URLs (as suggested by readers - cheers!). Or in case Opera is your favorite poison, wait here.

Links will be automatically replaced with their original address merely keeping the same number of characters.

Users of other browsers tin get the aforementioned functionality by installing the Long URL Please or Expand My Url bookmarklet.

Simply elevate one of the previous links to your bookmarks bar and clicking them will replace any short links in the active page with their original address while keeping the aforementioned number of characters.