Okay so you have 50 URLs and you want to convert them all into Bit.ly shortened URLs. But you don’t want to manually copy 50 URLs into bit.ly, and then manually paste 50 URLs out of Bitly.
Here is a tool you can use to mass shorten up to 50 bit.ly URLs. This simple tool uses Google Docs and the bit.ly API to automate the process. Here is how you do it.
Get a Bitly Account
Go get a free bitly.com account and log in to your account. Go to your account settings page. In settings, under advanced, you’ll see “OAuth Applications”, click the link and create a Generic Access Token (have this page open as you’ll need the keys in the the next steps).
On this page you need to confirm your Bitly password and go ahead and click “generate token”.
Get the Google Docs spreadsheet
Sign in to your Google Drive account and click this link to download the Google Docs spreadsheet
A copy of the spreadsheet will open. Now go to “File” -> “Make a copy” (Important: as this creates a copy which you can edit)
Start Creating Bulk Bit.ly URLs
Place the access token you generated in the earlier step into cell A3. Paste your URLs into cell A6
Your bit.ly shortened URLs should now appear in the Short URL column (column B6).
Et voila, it’s as simple as that
Matt
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This works only if I keep the document on google drive. If I download it, the formulas all work initially but then if I close and then reopen my spreadsheet, it gets screwed up. So strange.
That’s right Carole, won’t work ‘offline’ as the ‘formulas need to talk with’ the Bitly API. Haven’t tried it but the Google Drive Desktop app might work, let’s you work with docs and spreadsheets offline and it automagically saves and syncs.
I paste list 50 urls and it is very slow on working. It took me a long time to wait, it showed loading all time. Please show me how make it faster ?
OMG. I have needed this since forever. Thank you SO very much for creating it!
I am happy to hear that you found it helpful Karri
https://bbcnewsreal.blogspot.com/
Same here! Thank you very much for this useful hint!
After I shortened 250 links I got a “Rate Limit Exceeded”- error message. I expected this error much earlier. Does anyone know how long I have to wait before I can continue?
Hi Alex, glad you like it! This Bitly API developer page says “If you are experiencing rate limiting errors, please wait 60 minutes to resume making API calls.”
I’ve been using this for a couple of weeks and love it, but recently I’m seeing a message that I’m about to reach the ImportData limit of 50 (?)
I’ve managed to find so far, that the new version of Sheets doesn’t have this limit, but when I’ve tried to copy the function in to a new version it tells me that urlencode is an ‘unknown function’
Any ideas on creating this same tool in the new Sheets?
Hi Duncan, glad you like it. I haven’t experienced this, not sure if this will work but instead of copying the formulas into a new spreadsheet, see if making a copy of the spreadsheet works (top menu > file > make a copy). Let me know how you go.
Awesome tool! Thank you!
Do you know if there is a way to Title the links within a given parameter? For example, I’d like to shorten links with a title in order – Podcast 1, Podcast 2, Podcast 3, etc. or another batch, Blog 1, Blog 2, etc.
Is this possible?
Thanks Ellory… that’s a curveball question I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to, sorry
Perhaps you can use the following to accomplish your task.
http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/76740-what-s-a-custom-short-domain-and-why-do-i-want-on
really good guide. I never thought that bitly can be used to mass-shortening links!
Thanks for sharing mate! It really helped a lot!
Hey, thanks for this simple and useful tool and a detailed write-up ! Loved it !
You have no ideaaaaaa what this done for me, everyday I have been converting 38 urls’ one after the other…Best thing that’s happened this week lol. Thanks Guys, ya’ll ROCK!!!
Happy you like it Cathrine!
Ohhhh….. I LOVE THIS. Huge thanks Matt!!!!
How about 10k urls in bulk?
I’m afraid that this approach won’t be able to shorten that amount of links
Excellent. This does work! (some do not)
Thank You!
Great little Gdocs applet. Thank you!
Great Doc! thanks for share!
Thank you Matt for this post. You just saved me a whole lot of time! To be honest with you my eye first glazed over when I glanced at the API steps, but it was very well explained an incredibly simple.
Hi Ralph, I’m really happy to hear that you got it working and that you found it useful, thanks Matt
If you want an offline version, download as CSV
OH. MY. GOD.
That works flawlessly!
Thank you so much!
Super helpful thank you!!
Is anyone finding that bit links are not being created well and constantly loading or coming pu with N/a?
The same here, I could create short url some weeks ago but now I get only “loading…” message and can´t create. Is the script still working?
I just tested the spreadsheet plugging in my bitly oauth access token and it works for me (see http://postimg.org/image/sqgbciqld/)
Matt if you want to replicate the issue mentioned by others. Place a link to be shortened and leave it there DO NOT ERASE it. Then come back hours later sometimes the next day and then some or all will say N/A. Sometimes it fixes itself sometimes it doesn’t.
Did you manage to find a solution on that one? i.e. reusing the same sheet over more then 1 week, after day 2 you indeed see ‘N/A’ in the cells with bitly’s of the previous day… it seem he can generate links but tries to recreate them in bit.ly via the api and then encounters they already existed…
This is amazing. It just saved me soooo much time. Thanks!
can this be done for 2000 links by creating 40 different files?
Hi Randy.. have never tried that many, but I doubt it works as your account api only allows for 50 api calls..
Wondorful tool, it simplified my lots of manual. work
great. solve my problem. bulk short url
Hi,
I’ve been using the shortening service a few times in the past month but now it doesn’t seem to work. Any idea why?
Great tip, thank you. Do you have any idea how to accomplish the reverse? Decoding the shortened urls in bulk?
Thanks again,
Gary
Thank you so much helped me a lot!
It worked 🙂 Thanks for saving a lot time 🙂
Her bitly link does not appear, the problem is what?
Thanks a lot !!! I saved so much time ! 🙂
You can do something very similar with Rebrandly.com, except you can put it on your own custom domain instead of using “bit.ly” and you can do more than 50 URLs at once.
There is alos tiks.co
works pretty much as intended
I believe tiks.co is designed to make this – multiple URLs all at once and it varies the source dynamically and report grouped URLs that belong to same campaign
For the N/A problem, I figured that we just simply delete and paste the exact OAuth again. And voila, at least it works for me… Btw, thank you so much Matt! :]
Doesn’t seem to work anymore… Some API error on the step of generating new short urls in the table
Sir, I love you! I’ve been looking for this for so long.
You’re the real mvp!
This is exactly what I have been looking for!
really useful!
this doesn’t work. I followed the direction. when I went to the “make copy” part of the direction, it only let me save to drive but did not specify if this “drive” is my own computer’s hard drive or not. I did so anyway to continue to the next step, copy/pasted a bunch of URLs from a text file. there were no shortened URLs or anything whatsoever generated to the other box on the right side of the page. why can’t these stupid URL shorten websites just already have batch shorteners? this is tedious. I don’t want to be held up in my work to have to learn how to do something new just to get a task done. I also don’t want to download any program either. How do I know who made it or is it contains spyware?
Thanks Matt! This method is simply and well explained, so I could short all my links quickly. Regards!
This is great! Thanks!
Thank you. Worked a treat. So simple and so quick just when I needed it!
This thing still works without issues 🙂 You rock, Matt!
Saves time for the client reporting. and all.
This is not working for me today. I copy the long URLS from Excel, and it does nothing – what am I doing wrong?
Outstanding tutorial Matt. Thank you for this!
This is amazing Mr. it work, It just saved me so much time. Thanks!
Well looks interesting, i will try it – have the plan to shorten 2K links, so, based on what i read here it has to be done in batches? Is there any other tool to (semi) automate it ?
Thanks!
OMG! Thanks, bro. It totally works!
Hi there!
Unable to make a copy?
Is this still working on 2019? Because I’m trying to do it, but hasn’t it worked. Please someone could help me? Thanks