How To Bulk Shorten 150+ URLs With Bitly (Instructions + Google Sheet Template)

I’ve been there as well: you have a huge list of URLs you need to shorten and schedule up in your Buffer queue. You probably have more than 10 URLs you need to shorten through Bitly.

I bet you don’t want to manually copy-paste all of them in your preferred URL shortening service.

So you start searching on Google how to do that, right? And you try with variations of:

How to bulk shorten a list of URLs?

Btw: did you know Google URL shorter is no longer available as a free tool? Google shut it down in 2018 and will be discontinued by the end of March 2019.

Back to the main story here…

You need an efficient way for shortening a long list of URLs in Bitly. And your research for working solutions proved to be a waste of time: all of the top results you found were relying on an old way of getting this task done (like this one).

That’s a bummer. A shortened version of your disappointment, if you want.

Here’s the reason why all solutions out there aren’t working:

1. Bitly’s API keys are deprecated
2. All previous ways to dynamically shorten URLs were taking advantage of Bitly’s APIs
3. None of them works anymore

Fin of this productivity (sad) short story.

You don’t need to have a working knowledge of what APIs are (I don’t have it). Suffice to know is that when you read “deprecated” it means either something is no longer working or will soon stop working and it’s not in your best interest to use it.

So, has your research come to a dead end?

No, it hasn’t! Here’s how to automatically shorten hundreds of URLs without any scripting/deloping knowledge (in the example below, I had 150+ URLs).

These are the steps you should follow:

How To Bulk Shorten Multiple URLs With Bitly APIs — With Template

1. Make a copy of this Excel sheet (File -> Make a Copy…)
2. Generate your Access Token in Bitly by following the steps below:
   • Click on your username tab
   • Click on “Generic Access Token”
   • Click on the “Password” box and confirm your bitly password and generate your access token by clicking the orange button below “Generate token”
   • Copy your generic access token to your clipboard
3. Go to your copy of the Google Spreadsheet and paste your generic access token within the “Settings” tab, where it reads “add your Generic Access Token”. And add your Bitly username (your email address) as well
4. Now go to the “Shortener” tab and enter all your links you’d need to bulk shorten in column A (Long URL column). If you’re copying from another spreadsheet, use “Paste special > Paste values only”
5. Now click the cell you’ll find in B2 and drag it down for all the long URLs you’d like to shorten in bulk
6. Now, just wait for Bitly to pile up all your shortened URLs in the column!

Credits to Harish Kotra. Thanks!

Wrapping up

When you can automate even the smallest repetitive task, you earn an immense value from it: you get to free up time that, until that moment, was weighing you down and keeping you busy for doing that task.

Today, you have a way to get 20 minutes back from your working time.
Choose wisely how you’ll use them.