Difference between revisions of "URLTeam"

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(Monkeyshines scraper could help here.)
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  zi.ma
  zi.ma
  w3t.org
  w3t.org
== Distribution of tinyurl's ==
Tinyurl.com urls are supposed to be un-ordered now, but there's enough prehistory that you should concentrate on ones with the initial digit 5-9 or a-d. Distribution of 6-character tinyurl.com urls (from 20M tinyurls extracted from twitter)
        1         1 #
        63         64 0
      125       189 1
    282371     282560 2
    330545     613105 3
    386626     999731 4
  1585765   2585496 5
  1676929   4262425 6
  1009816   5272241 7
  1007035   6279276 8
  1009790   7289066 9
  1509965   8799031 a
  1712227   10511258 b
  4986046   15497304 c
  3592027   19089331 d
      331   19089662 e
      473   19090135 f
      514   19090649 g
      399   19091048 h
      353   19091401 i
      363   19091764 j
    14146   19105910 k
    33050   19138960 l
    33517   19172477 m
    33273   19205750 n
    194311   19400061 o
    194817   19594878 p
    194563   19789441 q
    85263   19874704 r
      896   19875600 s
      780   19876380 t
      167   19876547 u
      224   19876771 v
      484   19877255 w
        12   19877267 x
    92827   19970094 y
      126   19970220 z


[[Category: URL Shortening]]
[[Category: URL Shortening]]

Revision as of 19:30, 19 July 2009

Too many people using TinyURL and similar services

Twitter is a great example of what's wrong with trusting an online service with something of value. Check out some 'tweets':

  • Hah, I'm a Zombie! http://tinyurl.com/8gnnb7 Ahh, the fun we all have with each other. about 1 hour ago from web
  • Health privacy is dead. Here's why: http://ff.im/GMpx about 14 hours ago from FriendFeed
  • Hmm, friendfeed released a new "import Twitter" feature today. It is taking a LONG time on my account. I wonder why.... http://ff.im/GM5W about 14 hours ago from FriendFeed

If these TinyURL services go away, there's not much content here. See Link Rot.

So, the project, scrape the TinyURL (and similar) services.

STATUS (as of mid-April, 2009):
* tinyurl.com: 1M urls ripped
* ff.im: 1M urls ripped
* bit.ly: just started mid-April, 2009
  • NOTE: ripping is going slowly so I don't get banned and/or overwhelm the service. ff.im banned me for 24 hours once for ripping too quickly. Also, I'm ripping random URLs, not sequential.
  • This looks like it would be a good task for distributed computing. Majestic-12 is a project whose main bottleneck is bandwidth, and they are doing quite well. You'd just need to give people a block of URLs to check, and have them report back the results.

HOWTO

It's actually not as hard as it sounds, because we don't need to scrape any web pages or parse any html, since the services just send a Location: header when queried for the hash, we just ask the service for the hash and parse the headers for the redirect url:

(18) swebb@swebb.cluster Wed 11:10am  [~] % curl -LLIs http://tinyurl.com/6dvm2t | grep Location 
Location: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/too_many_people_use_tinyurl.php
(19) swebb@swebb.cluster Wed 11:10am  [~] % curl -LLIs http://ff.im/GMpx | grep Location
Location: http://friendfeed.com/e/08954685-00fe-4e55-b28f-4b99f83bfb0d/Health-privacy-is-dead-Here-s-why/

Walk through all possible hash tags, check for errors, and we're good-to-go.


Monkeyshines

The Monkeyshines algorithmic scraper has a tool to efficiently scrape URL shortening services -- see the examples/shorturls directory. It scales efficiently to tens of millions of saved URLs. It uses a read-through cache to prevent re-requesting urls, it allows multiple scrapers to run on different machines while sharing the same lookup cache. You can either feed it a list of bare urls, or have it randomly try either base-36 or base-62 URLs. With it, I've gathered about 6M valid URLs pulled from twitter messages so far.

URL shortening services:

1link.in
4url.cc
6url.com
adjix.com
ad.vu
bellypath.com
bit.ly
bkite.com
budurl.com
canurl.com
chod.sk
cli.gs
decenturl.com
dn.vc
doiop.com
dwarfurl.com
easyuri.com
easyurl.net
ff.im
go2cut.com
gonext.org
hulu.com
hypem.com
ifood.tv
ilix.in
is.gd
ix.it
jdem.cz
jijr.com
kissa.be
kurl.us
litturl.com
lnkurl.com
memurl.com
metamark.net
miklos.dk
minilien.com
minurl.org
muhlink.com
myurl.in
myurl.us
notlong.com
ow.ly
plexp.com
poprl.com
qurlyq.com
redirx.com
s3nt.com
shorterlink.com
shortlinks.co.uk
short.to
shorturl.com
shrinklink.co.uk
shrinkurl.us
shrt.st
shurl.net
simurl.com
shorl.com
smarturl.eu
snipr.com
snipurl.com
snurl.com
sn.vc
starturl.com
surl.co.uk
tighturl.com
timesurl.at
tiny123.com
tiny.cc
tinylink.com
tinyurl.com
tobtr.com
traceurl.com
tr.im
tweetburner.com
twitpwr.com
twitthis.com
twurl.nl
u.mavrev.com
ur1.ca
url9.com
urlborg.com
urlbrief.com
urlcover.com
urlcut.com
urlhawk.com
url-press.com
urlsmash.com
urltea.com
urlvi.be
vimeo.com
wlink.us
xaddr.com
xil.in
xrl.us
x.se
xs.md
yatuc.com
yep.it
yweb.com
zi.ma
w3t.org

Distribution of tinyurl's

Tinyurl.com urls are supposed to be un-ordered now, but there's enough prehistory that you should concentrate on ones with the initial digit 5-9 or a-d. Distribution of 6-character tinyurl.com urls (from 20M tinyurls extracted from twitter)

        1	         1	#
       63	        64	0
      125	       189	1
   282371	    282560	2
   330545	    613105	3
   386626	    999731	4
  1585765	   2585496	5
  1676929	   4262425	6
  1009816	   5272241	7
  1007035	   6279276	8
  1009790	   7289066	9
  1509965	   8799031	a
  1712227	  10511258	b
  4986046	  15497304	c
  3592027	  19089331	d
      331	  19089662	e
      473	  19090135	f
      514	  19090649	g
      399	  19091048	h
      353	  19091401	i
      363	  19091764	j
    14146	  19105910	k
    33050	  19138960	l
    33517	  19172477	m
    33273	  19205750	n
   194311	  19400061	o
   194817	  19594878	p
   194563	  19789441	q
    85263	  19874704	r
      896	  19875600	s
      780	  19876380	t
      167	  19876547	u
      224	  19876771	v
      484	  19877255	w
       12	  19877267	x
    92827	  19970094	y
      126	  19970220	z