See What’s Behind a Bitly Link Without Clicking On It

Bitly is a convenient tool for developing brief URLs to share in place of long URLs. Ive utilized it for many years to create customized URLs that are easy for my trainees to type. Some individuals utilize Bitly to try to mask URLs to attempt to get you to click on wicked links. Fortunately, there is a simple way to see where a Bitly link will take you without needing to really click the link..
The technique is to merely include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will reveal you what the original link was..

You can try this with my Bitly link of.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2 which will take you to the registration page for my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter (.
https://practicaledtech.com/weekly-newsletter/). If you try the same link however include “+” to the end of it so it checks out like this.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2+ you will go to the Bitly page where I reduced my initial URL.

Ive created a couple of short video demonstrations of how this trick works. This is the Instagram video that I made about it. This is the YouTube video that I made about it.

You may also like...