The Speed of URL Shorteners →
Pingdom tested the performance of a few popular URL shortening services. Short URLs promote portable content by making a link easier to pass around, this stuff is important!
How Website Performance Factors In
The overhead that an URL shortener adds is that, instead of going directly to a site, you first have to ask the servers of the URL shortening service where to go, and they will redirect you to the actual target site.
