Bitly was named in all 6 of the 6 answers we collected for URL shortener software, the only tool ChatGPT and Gemini recommended every single time.
We ran this measurement on 2026-08-06: six buyer questions about URL shortener software, put to ChatGPT and Gemini with one live web search behind each answer, and every product named plus every source domain recorded. Across the six answers, 14 different products got a mention. Bitly took 6 of 6 (100%). The next name, TinyURL, showed up in 4 of 6 (67%).
Below those two, the list thins fast. Linkly and Short.io tied at 3 of 6 (50%) each. Every other product, ten of them, was named exactly once, 1 of 6 (17%): 1Link, CutMe Short, Cuttly, Dub, Dub Links, Foxly, is.gd, JumpTo, Linkkit, and Replug. So four tools carried the category and a long tail of ten split the remaining single mentions.
One naming quirk is worth flagging up front. The tool "Dub" appeared twice under two different labels. It came up as "Dub Links" in the plain "best" question and as "Dub" in the "most affordable" question. We kept them as two separate rows rather than merge them into a "2 of 6" the data never actually produced. Each label scored 1 of 6.
How the answer changed when the question changed
Bitly was the only constant, named in all 6 phrasings. Everything else moved with the wording, and that movement is the whole story.
The vaguest question got the narrowest answer. "what url shortener software should I use" returned a single product: Bitly, 1 of 6. No second option, no runner-up, just one name.
The broadest question got the widest answer. "url shortener software recommendations" named 7 products in one go, and 5 of them appeared nowhere else in the study: CutMe Short, Cuttly, Foxly, JumpTo, and Linkkit. One word, "recommendations," surfaced a cluster of five tools that no other buyer phrasing pulled up.
"Free" and "affordable" are not the same query to an AI. The "best free url shortener software" answer named Short.io, TinyURL, is.gd, and Bitly (4 tools), and is.gd, a stripped-down genuinely free shortener, appeared only here. The "most affordable" answer named TinyURL, Short.io, Linkly, Bitly, Replug, and Dub (6 tools), and Replug and Dub, both paid tools with cheap plans, appeared only here. The two sets share Short.io, TinyURL, and Bitly, but the word "free" pulled a free tool while the word "affordable" pulled cheap paid tools. Same buyer intent, different vocabulary, different shortlist.
Two more single-question names round it out. "best url shortener software for small teams" was the only place 1Link showed up (1 of 6). The plain "best url shortener software" was the only place Dub Links showed up (1 of 6). If you only ever checked the one phrase "best url shortener software," you would never learn that a buyer asking for "recommendations" is shown seven tools, five of which you would otherwise never see.
The source map: who fed the answers
One roundup fed everything. zapier.com was cited in all 6 of 6 answers, the single most-used source in the study.
Community threads did most of the rest of the work. reddit.com was cited in 5 of 6 answers and quora.com in 4 of 6. Add efficient.app (4 of 6), a comparison roundup, and you have three non-vendor sources sitting behind two-thirds or more of the answers each. The rest of the supporting cast was thin: techrepublic.com, getapp.com, serchen.com, and youtube.com were each cited twice (2 of 6), and canva.com, flyn.to, and workload.co once each.
Here is the key insight. The vendors' own domains fed the answers, and every vendor whose domain was cited got named. bitly.com was a source in 5 of 6 answers and Bitly was named in 6 of 6. linklyhq.com fed 4 of 6 and Linkly was named in 3. short.io fed 3 of 6 and Short.io was named in 3. tinyurl.com fed 1 and TinyURL was named in 4. Four vendor domains cited, four vendors named. Their own published comparison pages are doing citing work for them.
The classic review directories were mostly absent. G2 and Capterra did not appear in a single one of the 6 answers. GetApp, a software review directory, did appear, but only twice (2 of 6), alongside the software listing site serchen.com (2 of 6). If you have been buying G2 and Capterra placement to win this category inside AI answers, this sample says that spend is not what these assistants are reading.
What actually gets a shortener named
The pattern across all 6 answers is blunt: you get named when you are present in the small handful of pages the assistant reads, and not otherwise. The winning sources here were one Zapier roundup (6 of 6), Reddit and Quora threads (5 and 4 of 6), a couple of comparison sites, and the vendors' own domains. Market share is not on that list. Bitly leads partly because it is big, but it also has its own domain feeding 5 of 6 answers and a foothold in the Zapier and Reddit sources everything else is competing for.
For a marketing person in this category, that turns "improve our AI visibility" into something you can actually do. Get into the Zapier-style roundup that fed all 6 answers. Be the answer in the relevant Reddit and Quora threads that fed 5 and 4 of 6. Publish the comparison page on your own domain, because linklyhq.com (4 of 6) and short.io (3 of 6) show that a vendor's own pages get cited and pull the product in with them. The 14-name list is not fixed: five of those names only exist in the results because one "recommendations" query happened to read a page they were on.
Where Glotier fits
Glotier does not sell URL shortener software, so we are correctly absent from all 6 of these answers. We would be worried if we were not, because we have not earned a place in any source a buyer's question actually reads for this category.
This measurement is exactly the thing we run for a customer's own category. Same six-question fan-out, same record of who got named and which domains fed each answer, pointed at the words your buyers actually type. If you want to see your category the way we just saw this one, the check is free, no account, about a minute.
The full list, counted
This table shows the four tools named more than once, plus five of the ten that were named a single time; the full single-mention set is listed earlier in this page. "Dub" and "Dub Links" are the same brand, kept as two rows because that is how the assistants labelled it across two separate questions.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bitly | 6 of 6 | 100% |
| TinyURL | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Linkly | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Short.io | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Dub | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| Dub Links | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| Replug | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| is.gd | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| 1Link | 1 of 6 | 17% |