Like any other 301 or permanent redirect all well behaved link shorteners such as Goo.gl or Bit.ly – will pass page rank to the final destination.

So yes, most “well behaved” URL shorteners will indeed pass page rank and anchor text to the final destination.

However, keep in mind that with some pages such as Twitters’ webpages – many of the links have a no-follow.

How does bitly work?

bitly works by issuing a “301 redirect”: a technique for making a webpage available under many URLs. When you shorten a link with bitly, you are redirecting a click from bitly to the destination URL. A 301 redirect is the most efficient and search engine-friendly method for webpage redirection, and is what bitly uses. Because bitly doesn’t re-use or modify links, we consider our redirects to be permanent.

How does goo.gl work?

The Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. For example, the short URL http://goo.gl/l6MS is a convenient shorthand representation for the long URL http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html.

Do you use link shorteners on a regular basis? If so, what is your favorite? If not, why?