What happens when you click a short link

A URL shortener is, at its core, a lookup table with very good manners. Each short code — the part after the slash in website-shortner.link/x7Kq2 — maps to one long destination URL. When you click, here's the whole journey:

1. Your browser requests the short URL. The request travels over HTTPS to our redirect servers.
2. We look up the code. The short code is matched against our link database. This lookup is the entire "work" of the service, and it completes in a few milliseconds.
3. We respond with an HTTP redirect. Instead of a web page, your browser receives a redirect status code and a Location header containing the original long URL.
4. Your browser follows it. It immediately requests the destination, and you land exactly where the link's creator intended. No page from us ever renders in between.

Redirect status codes, decoded

If you've ever peeked at a shortener in your browser's network tab, you've seen three-digit codes doing the work. The ones that matter:

Code	Name	What it means
301	Moved Permanently	"This resource lives at the new URL forever." Browsers and search engines cache it aggressively.
302	Found	The classic temporary redirect. Widely used, but older clients sometimes change the request method when following it.
307	Temporary Redirect	The modern, stricter temporary redirect: the request method is preserved exactly, and clients don't cache the mapping long-term.
308	Permanent Redirect	Like 301, but method-preserving. The permanent counterpart to 307.

Shortner defaults to temporary redirects (307) for most links. That's a deliberate choice: because temporary redirects aren't cached long-term by browsers, features like editable destinations and link expiry actually work — when a customer updates a link, every future click goes to the new destination immediately instead of being stuck with a stale cached answer. Permanent (301) redirects are available for links whose destinations will genuinely never change.

Where the speed comes from

Redirects are tiny — a response of a few hundred bytes — so the only real cost is the lookup. We keep links in memory-backed storage close to the redirect layer, which is why the whole round trip typically adds only a blink to your click.

And where safety comes in

Every link on the service is bound by our Acceptable Use Policy. Links reported through our abuse process are reviewed, and links that violate the policy are disabled — after which the short URL returns an error page instead of redirecting.

Still curious? The blog has a deeper dive on redirect codes, including why the differences matter for SEO and analytics.