Bit.ly is all about Ranking

Very interesting write up on Bit.ly’s grand plans. Bit.ly is a URL shortening service, like Tiny URL, that is currently used to shorten 2-3 million unique URLs a day that are then posted to social networks like Twitter.

Bit.ly (and other services like it) is basically sitting on a treasure trove of data about what URLs are hot/popular. The company plans to use that data to drive a new service called “Bit.ly Now” which, similar to sites like Digg.com, aims to present a real-time view of the most popular URLs being shared each day. Bit.ly’s service could do a better job than Digg at determining which URLs are most popular due to the fact that they see 100 times more URLs each day.

This trove of popularity data could also ultimately be used by search engines to better rank segments of the web that are new and have not yet become entrenched in the link graph.

Could be a game changer.