These days, everyone is using free URL shortening services to turn long URLs into short URLs. MicroBlogging sites like Twitter do not accept characters more than 160 words. So, the Free URL shortening services help us to share the URLs easily on any site. Some of these places also provide Analytics so you can track the clicks. Here are some most popular Free URL shortening services.
TinyURL
The TinyURL is the most trusted and good URL shortening service. This site allows you to create short links for the long links you provide. You can also create custom short links if available. The site also offers a bookmarklet so you can easily create short URLs without opening TinyURL website. Just click on the bookmarklet and it will generate a short URL for the long URL. It also provides Preview feature so you can view preview before going to the short URL.
Bit.ly
The Bit.ly is the great another free URL shortening service. This site can also generate short URLs of the long URLs. It provides analytics tool so you can analyze your shorter URLs.
Goo.gl
The official Google URL shortening service. Google has launched this service recently, and it lets you create short URLs. It also shows you how many clicks have been made on a particular URL. It also provides QR code for the created short URL so you can use any QR code reader to get to that URL directly. You can see your recently created short URLs by the time, like you can see which URLs were created two hours ago, one day ago, one week ago, one month ago and all the time.
The MicroBlogging site Twitter also provides the service to short URLs (http://t.co) but only for the Tweets. You cannot use it on the Twitter.