I audited 7 link shorteners before building mine — here's what nobody does, and I have zero users yet
I've been building Truthylink (https://truthylink.com) solo for about two and a half months. Before writing a single feature, I went and actually used Bitly, Short.io, Rebrandly, Cuttly, BL.INK, T2M, and Dub.co to see what a "good enough" link shortener even looks like — and found five gaps that showed up across all of them:
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No safety signal on the link itself — so every link on Truthylink gets scanned against Google Safe Browsing on creation and on every URL edit, with a warning interstitial if something's flagged.
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No one tells you when your destination breaks — so there's a daily job pinging every active link; you get notified on a 404, an expired SSL cert, or a load-time spike instead of finding out from a customer. (BL.INK has a version of this, but it's enterprise-gated.)
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"Bot filtering" stops at user-agent checks — so I added VPN/proxy detection and click-farm/repeat-clicker patterns, and show a real "clean click rate" instead of one trust-me number.
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Everyone tracks with cookies or a JS pixel — analytics here is server-side only, no cookies, no fingerprinting. Feels like the right side of GDPR/DPDP history to be on.
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Dark social is invisible everywhere — WhatsApp/Telegram/iMessage/Slack shares show up as "direct" in literally every tool I tried. ~70% of sharing happens there. Truthylink classifies it instead of dumping it in one bucket.
All five are free on every plan — I didn't want the interesting stuff to be the upsell.
Where I'm at: this is genuinely early. A handful of users, no real distribution yet — I wanted to get this in front of people who actually run link shorteners day-to-day before I do anything louder. If you've used Bitly/Short.io/Dub.co and there's an analytics blind spot that's actually cost you something, I'd rather hear about it now.
The dark social point genuinely surprised me, 70% of sharing being invisible in every existing tool is a wild blind spot nobody talks about. Respect for actually going and using all 7 competitors before writing a single feature, that's the part most people skip.
Thanks, that means a lot the dark social thing is the one I got most excited about building too, so good to hear it lands the same way from the outside.
And yeah, using all 7 instead of just reading their feature pages took way longer than I expected, but it's the only way I actually found the gaps. Reading a comparison page tells you what they claim. Using the product tells you what's actually annoying.
Signal Feedback Breakpoint：Repeated Click-Fraud Pain → Credible Pre-Spend Intervention
Ad runners repeatedly report click-fraud losses
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Reactive-vs-proactive gap is selected
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Truthylink identifies suspicious traffic at click-time
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【Current Breakpoint】
The signal enables action before further budget is lost
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Operator changes campaign behavior
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Measured repeat spend is reduced
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Operator keeps using or pays
That's the exact gap, I've validated the top of the chain (pain is real, signal fires at click-time, proactive vs. reactive is a real differentiator), but nothing past the breakpoint. Nobody's told me "saw the flag, changed X, spend dropped by Y". That's a harder claim than "we catch it early."
Next step: ask the same segment a follow-up question, your style not "did detection help" but "what did you actually do differently, and did your numbers move?" Will report back either way, repeats or nothing.
Exactly. That’s the right next cut.I’d keep the return in three separate steps: saw the flag / changed something because of it / a named metric moved afterward. Otherwise a lower spend number can get credited to detection even if the platform filtered invalid traffic itself or something else changed in the campaign.A small update is enough: asked / took action / measurable move / most repeated action.This round can prove whether the action chain exists in the segment. If it repeats, that’s the workflow to test live with Truthylink next. If it doesn’t, the honest claim stays faster detection and cleaner analytics, not spend reduction.
Good catch on the split, Collapsing "spend went down" into one number would let me falsely credit detection for something the ad platform's own filtering did. Three separate facts per person (saw flag / acted because of it / metric moved) is the right granularity, and the tracking format is simple enough to actually run.
Will go do this round and come back with what repeats. If the chain holds, that's the live workflow to build/test next. If it doesn't, I'll keep the claim honest and faster detection and cleaner analytics, not spend reduction, rather than stretch it.
that keeps the claim honest.One thing I’d freeze before the round: what counts as “the chain holds.” For this first pass, I’d use at least 2 independent operators showing all three steps: saw the flag / changed something because of it / a named metric moved afterward, with platform credits or other campaign changes logged separately.Two clean repeats are enough to justify one live Truthylink test, not a spend-reduction claim.Then the update can stay tiny: asked / complete chains / repeated action. Nothing else to change before you run it.
Ran it — replied to 3 of the original commenters (Altruistic-Pin-3593's thread, the residential-proxies post, and the accidental-clicks thread in r/advertising) with genuine follow-up questions along the saw/acted/metric-moved lines.
A week later: zero replies. Could mean people don't check back on old threads, or that getting this depth of answer needs a more direct ask (DM, or a fresh dedicated post) rather than a reply buried in an old comment chain.
Given your own "nothing repeats" framing — I'm reading this as an inconclusive result, not a broken chain. Not going to force more activity into these threads right now (new account, low karma). Will keep the door open if any of the three reply later, otherwise, treating this attempt as done and moving on to other work for now.
Three old-thread replies and zero responses is enough to stop that path.
I wouldn’t wait for a natural conversation now. You already have the pain signal and a working product. The next test is whether one matched PPC operator will put Truthylink on a live campaign.
Before outreach, I’d lock one user and one job: a PPC consultant or small agency managing active campaigns, using Truthylink to separate suspicious traffic from real visitors for cleaner reporting and faster investigation.
One technical check first: confirm the Google Ads URL/tracking setup won’t create destination or redirect issues. Then build a qualified list and offer one campaign / one link / seven days, with no account access and no migration.
Track targeted / replied / qualified / pilot started / still enabled on day 7. At this point, getting one real pilot tells you more than another round of pain research.
Fair - three replies, zero responses is a clear enough stop signal. Agreed on the shift: I have the pain signal and a working product, so the real test now is usage, not more conversation.
Locking the target: PPC consultant or small agency running active campaigns, using Truthylink specifically to separate suspicious traffic from real visitors for cleaner reporting and faster investigation.
Will check the Google Ads URL/tracking compatibility first before any outreach — don't want to offer a pilot that breaks someone's existing tracking setup on day one. Then building the qualified list and making the exact offer you laid out: one campaign, one link, seven days, no account access, no migration.
Tracking targeted / replied / qualified / pilot started / still enabled on day 7. Will report back with real numbers, not intent.
Good call freezing this now instead of after seeing results. Locking it in: 2 independent operators with all three steps (saw the flag / acted because of it / a metric moved) = enough to run one live Truthylink test. Not enough to claim spend reduction — that's a separate, later bar. Platform credits or other campaign changes get logged separately, not folded into "metric moved."
the dark-social classification is your sharpest wedge — and where i'd poke hardest: WhatsApp/iMessage/Signal send no referrer at all, which is exactly why every tool dumps them in "direct." so what signal are you actually classifying on? and there's real tension with your no-fingerprint stance — you've given up the very signals others use to tell "dark-social direct" from "privacy-browser direct" or "someone typed the URL." if you've cracked that cleanly without fingerprinting, THAT'S the headline, not a bullet — it's the one genuinely hard problem in the list. safety-scan + broken-link alerts are nice but table-stakes-able; the attribution is the moat.
Straight answer, since you asked the real question: no, I haven't cracked it. The signal is exactly what you'd guess — no referrer + mobile device (from user-agent) gets bucketed as dark social. That's it. No fingerprinting, but also no way to tell that click apart from someone typing the URL on their phone, or a privacy browser on mobile stripping the referrer for unrelated reasons. Those all land in the same bucket right now, and that's a real false-positive source, not a solved problem.
The one part that's actually clean, not a heuristic: when someone copies a link from the Truthylink dashboard, I attach a share token to that specific copy. If that exact token comes back on a click, I know for certain it was a deliberate share, not a guess. But that only covers links copied from my own UI — if that link gets forwarded again by whoever received it, the token's gone and it falls back to the mobile/no-referrer guess.
So it's a real signal plus a decent heuristic stacked together, not a clean crack of the whole problem. You're right that this is the actually hard one — appreciate you pushing on specifics instead of taking the "70% invisible" line at face value.
The “zero users” part is probably more important than the competitor audit.
Auditing 7 link shorteners can reveal feature gaps, but it does not prove that users urgently want another link shortener.
I would test the positioning before building more. The first question is: who is the narrowest buyer?
Possible angles:
“Another link shortener” is hard to sell. “A link tracking/reporting tool for [specific user] with [specific pain]” is easier to validate.
Before adding features, I would pick one audience and run 10 direct conversations around their current link workflow.
Fair, and it lines up with what @mnauf said elsewhere in this thread too. The feature audit proves I found gaps, not that anyone urgently wants this.
Your four segments are useful because they're different from what came up in another thread here (WhatsApp sharers, ad runners, agencies, campaign ops) — newsletter creators and SaaS founders launching are two I hadn't considered as a specific buyer, not just a use case.
I think this actually merges with the other research someone else pushed me toward: pick one narrow segment first, then ask them the failure question; not "do you want a link shortener" but "what's actually gone wrong with your link tracking before." Doing both at once instead of two separate exercises.
Will pick one segment and start there instead of talking to a mix of everyone.
The "used all seven before writing a line" part is the real lesson here. Half my own roadmap came from what annoyed me in competitors, not from ideas in my head. Way more reliable than a brainstorm.
The dark-social-as-"direct" one would sell me on its own. Everyone's treating a traffic source that's ~70% mislabeled as clean data and never questioning it.
Yeah, that matches my experience exactly. Most of what I built came from "why does this annoy me" while using the other 7, not from sitting down and brainstorming features.
And dark social is the one that got me too. Everyone reports "direct traffic" like it's a clean number, when it's mostly just shares nobody can see. Once you notice it you can't unsee it.
While you have done a great research, have you realized that most users don't need these features? I use link shortners quite frequently and end up using anyone that comes up at the top.
Hey @mnauf — following up on your comment. You mentioned you use link shorteners pretty frequently and mostly just go with whatever's on top when you search. Actually curious about something more specific: has a shortened or tracked link ever gone wrong on you in a way that actually cost you something? Not asking if you'd want a feature. Genuinely just want the real story if one comes to mind.
Things like: bot clicks messing up numbers you were reporting on, a link breaking/expiring without warning, a link looking sketchy to someone you sent it to, or a click report you couldn't fully trust or explain.
If nothing comes to mind, that's a useful answer too. Just trying to figure out what actually breaks for people versus what we assume breaks.
Fair, and honestly true for most people low intent, no loyalty, whatever's on top wins. None of this moves that user.
The bet is a narrower group: someone whose brand got flagged as phishing, an agency explaining fake clicks to a client, a marketer with bot-inflated ad numbers. Might be too small a market. I haven't proven otherwise yet.
Also you picking "whatever's on top of search" kind of is my current problem. Truthylink barely ranks yet, so even people who'd care can't find it.
Zero users with a shipped product is a distribution problem, not a product problem most of the time. Are you trying Reddit/communities yet or mostly launch channels?
Good question, and the honest answer is: mostly launch channels so far this post, plus X and LinkedIn which I'm just about to start posting on. I haven't touched Reddit yet.
I know that's a gap. Plan is to build a separate personal account there, spend a few weeks just being a normal person in relevant communities before ever mentioning what I built don't want to be the guy who shows up with a link on day one. Just haven't gotten to it yet, this post is honestly step one of actually doing distribution instead of just building.
If you've done the Reddit thing before, curious what actually worked vs. what just got you ignored.
Smart to warm a personal account first — Reddit punishes "new account + link" harder than "new account + helpful comment for 2 weeks."
What actually worked vs ignored for me:
If you want a shortcut on the finding part: send me what you sell + 2 subs where your buyers hang out. I'll pull 5 threads worth replying to with draft replies — free sample so you can see if it's useful before you spend a week lurking.
That's a genuinely useful breakdown, thanks especially "filtered: no comment history," hadn't thought about that being a rejection reason too, not just an ignore reason.
I'll take you up on the offer. What I sell: Truthylink, a link shortener that adds trust/safety signals most tools skip link safety scanning, destination-health monitoring, bot/fraud-aware click counts, and dark social attribution (catching WhatsApp/Telegram/iMessage shares that every other tool just dumps into "Direct").
Subs where I'd guess buyers hang out: r/marketing and r/SaaS but I'm genuinely not sure those are right, so tell me if you'd pick differently.
Thanks for the detail on Truthylink — that's a much clearer wedge than "another shortener."
On subs: your instinct on r/marketing + r/SaaS is right. I also ran r/analytics, r/PPC, r/digital_marketing, plus r/webdev, r/sysadmin, r/cybersecurity (link safety), and r/ecommerce (campaign links). Expanded to ~66 pain phrases around attribution, dark social / "Direct" traffic, click fraud, and link trust.
Reddit was thin for this niche today. Out of everything pulled, one thread scored high enough to keep:
https://threadscout-theta.vercel.app/feed/74923c1a-ae29-4e77-bf8a-42a9df689dca
Best match: r/PPC — someone losing clients because Pinterest conversions show as "Direct" and they can't prove attribution. That's very close to your dark-social / "where did this click actually come from" angle. Draft reply is help-first, no link.
The rest either didn't match Truthylink closely enough or were generic marketing noise — which is actually what the scoring is for.
Two questions that help me more than "looks cool":
If the angle is right I'll keep widening search. If you want daily runs by email, drop your address — otherwise I'll post updates here on IH.
That PPC thread is a genuinely good match. "Conversions showing as Direct, can't prove attribution" is close to exactly what dark social tracking is for. So yeah, that's a conversation worth showing up in.
On bias for the next batch: attribution/dark-social over trust-safety for now that's the angle getting the strongest reaction elsewhere too, so more signal there is more useful to me right now.
I noticed the sample came out of a paid tool (ThreadScout, $39/mo) rather than manual searching. Should've clocked that from the start, no complaints, just calling it what it is. I'll pass on the email/daily-run offer for now, but appreciate you actually doing the work instead of just telling me to go lurk for two weeks.
Really helpful — attribution/dark-social confirmed, I'll bias that way if I run another batch.
Fair call on ThreadScout being the engine behind it. I was doing it by hand at first; automated the hunt because manual search at 66 keywords gets old fast. $39 is only if daily runs save someone real time — sounds like you're not there yet, which is fine.
Good luck with Truthylink — that PPC angle is a legit reply opportunity whenever your account's ready. 19$ for Founder intro. Refund option is ready for the first month.
Either way, curious if you actually show up in that thread — would be useful to know if the draft tone felt postable or too polished.
Good to know about the $39. You're right, I'm nowhere near needing daily automated runs yet. Appreciate the $19 founder offer, but I'll pass on that too for the same reason, not a volume problem for me right now.
Honest answer on the draft: a little too polished, yeah. "Such a common and frustrating challenge" and "some tools are designed to help you catch those otherwise hidden attributions" read like copy, not someone who's actually hit this. I'll rewrite it before posting — same thread, but naming the actual mechanism (last-click missing earlier touchpoints, referrer getting stripped) instead of "some tools." Will show up there either way, just not with that exact draft.
For Reddit, I’d start with existing pain threads before making any new posts. Search the subs for phrases like “Bitly analytics”, “UTM reporting”, “bot clicks”, “short link expired”, “link looks suspicious”. Reply where someone already has the problem, and keep the tool out of it unless they ask.
The signal I’d watch for is whether people describe the same pain in their own words. If 5-10 people independently complain about bot traffic or broken destination links, that’s a much better distribution angle than “new link shortener”.
This is exactly the kind of concrete thing I needed instead of "just try Reddit." Searching existing pain threads instead of posting cold, specific phrases to search for that's actionable in a way "engage with communities" never is.
And I like that you're pointing at the same thing riceroad's been pushing on in another thread here, look for the same complaint repeating across independent people, not just one loud post. Bot traffic and broken destinations both came up as candidate failures there too, so if Reddit search turns up the same ones, that's two different signals agreeing with each other.
Going to actually try this before doing anything else on Reddit. Thanks for the specific phrases much more useful than "go build karma."
Really fair on the draft tone — that's exactly the signal I need. Naming the mechanism (last-click, stripped referrer) beats generic empathy every time.
No pressure on paid runs. Whenever daily hunt costs you more than ~30 min/week, you know where to find me.
Good luck in that PPC thread — genuinely curious if your version lands better than the AI draft.
Appreciate that, and no hard feelings on the pitch — you were upfront once I called it. Will let you know how the PPC reply lands, good or ignored.
sounds good — would love to hear how it lands either way. the "good or ignored" split is usually more useful than polite "great tool" feedback.
Same, I will report back either way.
perfect — either outcome is useful data.
The danger with one combined score is that it may hide the job the link is doing.A WhatsApp share, an ad campaign, and an agency client report probably don’t care about the same trust signal.For private sharing, safety may matter most.
For ads, clean click rate may matter most.
For client reporting, confidence in the numbers may matter most.
For campaign ops, broken destination alerts may matter most.
So maybe the first test is not “one score vs separate signals” yet.It’s finding which failure actually costs users something.Talk to 5 people already using Bitly / Short.io / Dub / Rebrandly and ask about the last time link data or link trust caused a real problem: bot clicks, broken destination, unsafe-looking link, unreliable report, or dark social hidden as direct.If the same failure repeats, that probably tells you which signal Truthylink should lead with.Until then, separate signals may be safer than one universal score.
Yeah, that's fair — I was already halfway into "how do I combine these signals" mode, and you just pointed out I skipped a step. The real question isn't the scoring model, it's which failure actually costs someone something.
Your four examples map pretty cleanly to how people are actually using it so far, from what I've seen that WhatsApp shares mostly care about safety, someone running an ad cares about clean click rate, and nobody's asked me about client reporting yet because I don't have agency users at this stage. That gap alone is useful tells me I don't actually know that one yet.
I'll do what you said — go find people using Bitly/Short.io/Dub/Rebrandly and ask about the last time link data actually burned them. Not going to pretend I'll get to it this week, but it's a much better next step than guessing at a scoring formula.
Thanks for pushing back on this genuinely more useful than agreement would've been.
This is exactly the useful part.You were thinking about the scoring model, but the better question is probably the one you just wrote: which failure actually costs someone something?That feels much closer to the real wedge.The WhatsApp / ads / agency gap is already useful too. If nobody has asked about client reporting yet, that probably means it should stay as an assumption for now, not a product pillar.
The next thing I’d be most curious to see is what repeats when you talk to those Bitly / Short.io / Dub / Rebrandly users.Not whether they like the features.
More like:
what was the last link-related failure that actually hurt them?
bot clicks?
broken destination?
unsafe-looking link?
bad campaign numbers?
dark social hidden as direct?
client report they couldn’t defend?
If the same failure shows up a few times, that probably tells you much more than a score model could.Also, thanks for saying the pushback was more useful than agreement. That’s exactly the kind of product signal I’m trying to learn from too: not more positive feedback, but feedback that changes the next move.If you do have time to run those conversations later, I’d genuinely be interested to see what changed after.
Appreciate this — the reframe is the right one. "Which failure actually costs someone something" beats "one score vs. separate signals" because it's testable and the score debate isn't.
Agreed on keeping the four segments (private share / ads / agency reporting / campaign ops) as assumptions, not pillars. Client reporting is the best example — nobody's asked for it yet, so it doesn't get to be a pillar until someone does.
I'll run the interviews with your exact framing: not "do you like this feature" but "what was the last link-related failure that actually hurt you" — bot clicks, broken destination, unsafe link, bad campaign numbers, dark social miscounted as direct, or a client report you couldn't defend. Whichever one repeats is the one I build around and lead with in messaging.
I'll come back and post what I find — you asked to see what changed, and honestly that's a better forcing function than any deadline I'd set for myself.
useful loop.The score question felt like a product-design decision, but the “what failure actually cost someone something?” question turns it into something you can test with real users.The part about client reporting is especially useful too.If nobody has asked for it yet, keeping it as an assumption instead of a pillar feels right. That alone prevents building around a segment that hasn’t shown up yet.What I’d be most interested to see later is not just which failure people mention once, but which one repeats across different users.If “bot clicks burned my ad data” keeps coming up, that probably points one way.If “unsafe-looking links hurt WhatsApp sharing” keeps coming up, that points another way.If nobody mentions agency reporting, that tells you something too.Really appreciate you taking the pushback seriously. This is exactly the kind of update that would be worth coming back with after the interviews — what changed in your thinking after hearing the same failure, or not hearing it at all.
Good catch, I was thinking that "ask 5 people, see what they say" you're pointing at something sharper: it's not about any one answer, it's about what repeats. One person saying "bot clicks burned my ad data" is a data point. Three people saying it independently is a signal.
I'll track it that way same failure showing up across different people, not just logged once and moved on. And if agency reporting stays silent across all 5, that's as useful an answer as any of the others repeating.
Will come back with what actually repeated, and honestly, what changed in my thinking either way including if nothing repeats cleanly and I have to admit the segments aren't as clean as we guessed.
Exactly. That distinction is the useful part.One answer is just a data point. The same failure showing up independently across different users is where it starts becoming a real signal.Also, “nothing repeats” is not a failed outcome.That may be just as useful, because it would mean the segments are not as clean as we guessed, or that the current framing is still too broad.Really appreciate you being willing to come back with what actually changed, not just whether people liked the idea. That kind of update is much more useful than another round of feature opinions.
Good point "nothing repeats" means the framing's too broad, not just wrong segments. Hadn't considered that third outcome.
This thread genuinely changed my plan went from "ask 5 people what they think" to "watch for what repeats, take silence seriously too." Going to go actually do it now.
Back with whatever it turns out to be a repeats, silence, or a bad framing.
Love this shift.That’s the right test — not proving the idea yet, just making the signal less blurry.Curious what comes back.
Hey @riceroad — following up as promised. Went and ran the research your way: not "do you like this feature," just "what was the last link-related thing that actually cost you something."
Here's what happened: talked to a few people directly, but the clearest signal actually came from searching real pain threads on Reddit (r/PPC, r/advertising) rather than direct interviews. Found the same failure, unprompted, from 5 independent people across 3 different threads: bot/residential-proxy click fraud silently draining ad budgets, and every existing tool people mentioned (ClickCease specifically) only catches it after the money's already spent — reactive, not proactive. One person called it "killing our business completely."
What's notable: I also specifically searched for the other three candidate failures — agency client-reporting problems, broken-destination-link incidents, and unsafe-looking links in private sharing — and found nothing real on any of them, despite genuinely looking. So it's not that I found one signal among many; it's that one thing repeated everywhere I looked, and the others didn't show up at all.
So the answer to "which failure costs someone something": bot-click fraud on ad campaigns, and specifically the reactive-vs-proactive gap. That's the segment I'm building/positioning around now — ad runners getting hit by sophisticated click fraud, not the WhatsApp-sharer or agency-reporting angles we were debating earlier.
Thanks for pushing on this instead of letting me guess at a scoring model.
Appreciate it. Once I've actually run the interviews, I'll come back here either way. Repeats, silence, or "the framing needs work." No more talking about doing it without doing it.
What stood out to me isn't any single feature—it’s the shift from “shortening links” to “trusting links after they’re shared.” Most tools optimize creation. You're optimizing what happens after distribution, when the link is already outside your control. That’s a much harder problem space, but also a more defensible one if you get the feedback loop right between safety signals, breakdown detection, and real-world click quality.
Thanks, that's a really good way to put it — better than how I've been describing it myself.
You're right that "after it's shared" part is the hard bit. Right now I show three separate things — is the link safe, is the destination still working, and how clean the clicks are — but they're just sitting next to each other, not combined into one score. I haven't merged them because I'm not sure that's even the right move. Someone sharing a link in a WhatsApp group probably cares most about safety. Someone running ads probably cares most about click quality. If I squash it into one number, I might hide the thing they actually care about.
So honestly, I don't have that part solved yet. Have you seen this kind of problem before — combining a few different signals into one score vs just showing them separately? Curious how you'd think about it.
I have seen it, and I don't think the core decision is whether to combine the signals into one score or keep them separate.
I think there's a bigger strategic decision underneath that question, and it's one that will shape how people interpret your product as it grows. I don't think I can explain the reasoning properly in a thread without oversimplifying it.
If you're interested, what's the best email to reach you on?
Ha, fair enough; some things really don't compress well into a comment thread. I'd love to hear the fuller version, especially the "as it grows" part, since that's usually the stuff that's easy to get wrong early and expensive to fix later.
[email protected] - email me whenever it's good for you, no rush.
Thanks! I've just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.
Got it, thanks. I will read it properly and get back to you, not just fire off a quick reply.