Troubleshooting Bitly Links

You may sometimes encounter errors creating trackable Bitly links. Below you can see what some of the errors mean, and what you can do about them.

Rate Limit Of 100 Bitlinks Created At A Time

Bitly's API only allows you to create 100 Bitlinks each hour. This message usually occurs if you try to bulk-import lots of posts, especially if sharing each post to multiple social profiles.

We'll create as many Bitlinks as possible straight away, and every hour after that, we'll try to make 100 more, until all Bitlinks have been created. This all happens automatically, but it's worth checking a few hours later to see if there are still any posts without Bitlinks in them.

MONTHLY_RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED / API_USAGE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED

Bitly accounts only allow you to make a certain number of Bitlinks each month. You should check your Bitly account to see what your monthly limit is. You can upgrade your Bitly account to increase this monthly limit if necessary.

Note: Bitly has significantly reduced the number of links available to free plans, now limiting them to just 10 links per month. This change applies to both new and older free accounts, even if they previously had higher link limits.

INVALID_ARG_DOMAIN

Bitly lets you choose different domains for the first part of your bitlink - usually their default domain: bit.ly

You can also connect your own custom domains, and customize which Bitly domain is used for each social profile.

Sometimes Bitly will not recognize your chosen domain as being available to you. This could happen if you changed your domains within your Bitly account and didn't re-connect your Bitly profile to SmarterQueue.

Note: 17th January 2022 - we've noticed lots of links failing with this error, even when using one of the default Bitly domains.

This seems to be a bug in their API, where you've told SmarterQueue to create links with a domain that isn't your first/default domain on Bitly.

We've reached out to them to fix this, but a potential solution in the meantime could be to check what your first/default domain is in your Bitly account, and set that as your chosen domain in SmarterQueue. You would then need to edit any links and turn link tracking on again, so that the bitlink can be tried again using your new domain choice.

INVALID_URL

The URL you're trying to shorten isn't valid, according to Bitly. You should check the URL again. If it still fails, you could try making the Bitlink yourself, and pasting it into SmarterQueue. Otherwise, you may need to publish the original link without click tracking.

ALREADY_A_BITLY_LINK

The link you're trying to shorten is already a Bitlink, so can't be shortened again. In the Post Editor, open the Link Settings, and see if you can select to share the "Final" link. You should then be able to turn Bitly click tracking on. If you don't see this option, it's because we weren't able to determine that it's already a Bitly link. You should visit this link in a browser, and copy the final/destination link, and paste that into the Post Editor instead.

ACCOUNT_DEACTIVATED / ACCOUNT_SUSPENDED

Your Bitly account has been suspended or deleted. You should check that the Bitly account you've connected is valid, and re-activated it, or connect a new Bitly account to SmarterQueue.

INVALID_ARG_LONG_URL

The format of the link you're sharing is invalid. Usually this could be because it has spaces in the link, or an additional http:// at the beginning. Click the Edit link button in the Post Editor, and correct any mistakes.

FORBIDDEN

This may happen if Bitly doesn't allow the link to be shortened. Or it could mean that your account is not currently allowed to make Bitlinks.

Request rejected, unknown reason

Bitly failed to shorten the link, but didn't explain why. Contact us with details so that we can investigate.