YouTube gives you plenty of places to drop a link: the description, a pinned comment, the community tab, the channel banner, cards, and end screens. What it does not give you is a way to shorten those links or see which video sent the click. A raw affiliate or product URL in a description often runs past 80 characters and reports nothing back.
That gap is what a YouTube URL shortener fills. It takes the long link you were about to paste, gives you a short one instead, and counts every tap before the viewer reaches the destination.
Why the links in your descriptions need shortening
YouTube makes full URLs clickable, so a long link technically works. It just works badly. A 90-character affiliate URL wraps onto two lines, hides the readable part under tracking parameters, and gives the viewer no reason to trust where it leads. When you say "link in the description" out loud in a video, you want people to find something clean, not a wall of characters.
A short link fixes the surface problem and a quieter one underneath it. It reads as linx.ly/kit instead of a string of random parameters, and every click on it passes through a counter first. Same tap for the viewer, a data point for you.
See which video actually drove the click
This is the part most creators never solve. Put the same product link in ten different descriptions and YouTube Analytics will not tell you which video sent the buyer. The destination site just sees a pile of traffic with no idea which upload it came from.
Give each video its own URL shortener link, and tag each one with the video it lives on, like utm_content=review and utm_content=tutorial. The report then splits into clean rows, one per video, instead of a single pile. Open the dashboard and you can read:
- Clicks over time. The spike on upload day, the long tail after, the second bump when the video gets recommended again weeks later.
- Country. Where the people clicking actually are, which is often not where your view count suggests.
- Device, brand, browser, OS. Phone or desktop, iPhone or Samsung. It matters when a checkout page quietly breaks on mobile.
- Referrer. Where a click came from when the source passes it along, like a site or app that reshared your link.
- UTM tags. Your own labels, so the same destination stays in separate rows for your review video and your tutorial.
A video with 500,000 views might send 40 clicks or 4,000. Without a tracked link, you are guessing which, and guessing is a poor way to decide what to make next.
Promoting one product across several videos? Give each video its own short link and tag it with the video's name in a UTM. Then your dashboard shows which upload actually converts instead of lumping them together.
One branded slug instead of a random string
By default, a shortener hands you a random ending like x7Kp2q. It is short, but it says nothing and nobody remembers it. A branded short link lets you set the ending yourself, so the same link becomes linx.ly/summer-kit. It sits on the shared linx.ly domain, and the part after the slash is yours to choose.
That matters more on YouTube than most places, because a chunk of your audience is half-watching on a TV or a phone across the room. A link they can read, and even type by hand if they pause the video, gets clicked. A random code does not.
Change where the link points without re-editing the video
Publishing a video freezes its description in practice. You can edit it, but nobody goes back to update the links in 200 old uploads. That is where a short link earns its place. Keep the same linx.ly/kit in every description and change the destination it points to from your dashboard. The sale ends, the product restocks, the affiliate program switches networks, and you update the link once instead of the description on every video.
A QR code and a bio page for the rest of your channel
Every short link you create comes with a QR code automatically, and scans land in the same report as taps. Handy if you also show the code in a video, on a thumbnail, or on merch, and you want the offline scans counted alongside the online clicks.
If you keep swapping which single link sits in your channel's link slot, a bio link page holds all of them behind one tracked URL. Your latest video, your shop, your other socials, one address that reports its own visits back to you.
How to shorten a YouTube link
- Copy the URL you want to promote: your product, an affiliate page, another one of your videos, or your own channel.
- Paste it into the URL shortener. Keep the random code or set your own, like
linx.ly/kit. - Drop it into the description, a pinned comment, or a community post. Add a UTM tag if the same link is going on more than one video.
- Open your dashboard whenever you want and read the clicks by video, country, and device.
Want the full picture on the analytics side? Read URL shortener with click tracking for what each number in the report actually means.
Turn your video into decisions
The links in a description are usually an afterthought, pasted in and forgotten. Shortening and tracking them turns that afterthought into the one place you can see whether a video sold anything. Whether you post once a month or twice a week, it is one of the smallest changes with the clearest payoff.
Frequently asked questions
Does YouTube allow shortened links?
Yes. Clean links from a reputable shortener are fine in descriptions, pinned comments, and community posts. Avoid throwaway shorteners with a spammy reputation, since those are the ones platforms tend to flag.
Can I shorten a link to my own YouTube video?
Yes. Turn a long youtube.com/watch?v=... or youtu.be link into a short linx.ly/... one, share it off-platform, and see where your views are coming from.
Will a short link hurt my reach?
No. A short link redirects to the destination instantly, and the viewer barely notices the extra step. It does not change how YouTube treats your video.
Can I change the destination after I post the link?
Yes. The short link stays the same in every description while you update where it points from your dashboard, so old videos keep sending traffic to the right place.
Is it free?
You can try Linxly free for 7 days with full access. After that, plans start at $0.99 a month, and you can cancel anytime.