What is khoz.me?

khoz.me is a utility that allows users to shorten a long URL, share it, and then track the resulting usage.

For example, you can turn 200 character long link into this:
http://khoz.me?5ac3 Our goal is to allow shortening URLs to the maximum extent technically possible.

Uses for khoz.me

Here are just a few of the many uses for khoz.me's URL shortening service: -

• Shorten web addresses for emails, forum posts, blogs etc. which cannot handle long URLs and might wrap them, making them unclickable
• Lower the character count when texting web addresses to a mobile phone
• Hide the real URLs of affiliate links from visitors to your site
• Obscure your real email address from bots which harvest them to spam (enter an address like mailto:myaddress@mydomain.com). Note that this feature does appear to be browser dependant so such links may not work in every browser
• Circumvent protections on sites which don't allow direct links to a competitor's site (if you are violating a site's terms you do so at your own risk)
• Clean up bookmarks for social bookmarking sites or sites with low character limits like Twitter

Certain uses of  khoz.me are forbidden, for example use in unsolicited commercial email (SPAM). Be sure to check our terms of use

Technical information

How long will shortened URLs be?

The short answer: 18 characters or less, including the beginning http://

The long answer: It depends how many URLs have already been shortened by the service. All generated URLs will be of the form http://khoz.me?[code], so are 15 characters long plus the length of the generated alphanumeric code. The alphanumeric code takes a varying amount of space based on how many URLs we have already stored, as shown below: -

• Up to 62 shortened URLs - 1 character
• From 62 up to 3,844 shortened URLs - 2 characters
• From 3,844 up to 238,328 shortened URLs - 3 characters
• From 238,328 up to 14,776,336 shortened URLs - 4 characters
• From 14,776,336 up to 916,132,832 shortened URLs - 5 characters
• From 916,132,832 up to the current limit shortened URLs - 6 characters

Realistically, it is highly unlikely that the system will ever have so many URLs stored that the generated alphanumeric code will be more than 5 characters long. As such, shortened URLs generated by khoz.me are basically guaranteed to be 18 characters or less (11 or less not counting the http:// scheme declaration).

This is usually considerably shorter than the URLs that rival shortening services generate for two reasons: -

1. The domain name for our service itself is shorter
2. In many cases our encoding scheme is superior

How long do the new shortened URLs last?

We never remove shortened URLs, as long as they are created in accordance with our terms & conditions. As such we expect them to last forever excepting technical issues beyond our control and other difficulties covered in the terms.

How does khoz.me work?

When you shorten a URL, khoz.me stores the long version in our database, and assigns the URL a unique alphanumeric code. For example, if you shorten the URL http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh and the link you get back is http://khoz.me?a381 , then the unique code that your URL has been assigned is a381.

When somebody visits your new shortened URL, khoz.me takes this unique code, looks up the original long URL in our database, and then redirects the visitor to the original destination. All of this happens automatically and extremely quickly, so it appears as if the shortened link took the visitor right there.

What is the longest URL that khoz.me will shorten?

khoz.me will shorten URLs up to 2,000 characters in length. This is an arbitrary limit we've imposed to limit misuse. We've never seen a valid URL approaching this length and hopefully never will.

What action does khoz.me take to prevent spam?

We take spam complaints very seriously and do our utmost to ensure shortened URLs are not used to circumvent spam filters. All submitted URLs are automatically checked against the SURBL combined blacklist of known spam sites. We also blacklist links to other URL shortening/redirection services to prevent spammers creating "chains" of shortened links for abusive purposes.

In addition spam complaints (see contact page for complaint email address) will be investigated and any links found to be used for spam will be promptly disabled and removed from our database.

Does khoz.me provide an API so programmers can use it within other applications?

Yes, we provide a simple API for this purpose. Please check our tools page.