Apple recently (1/31/2013) updated their guide to creating App Store short links (aka Technical Q&A QA1633). We are all used to seeing long and usually incomprehensible urls that point to an application on the Apple App Store. In order to retrieve such direct links you had to use Apple’s LinkMaker Tool or extract them from the App Store itself.
As you can imagine this was a pain: long url, hard to find and ugly to see. More savvy marketers usually used shortening services such a bit.ly to cope with this. Luckily, things just got much better.
Now you are able to create and distribute official App Store short links. Not only are these human readable but they will also redirect the user to the appropriate App Store country.
The procedure to create your own App Store short links might seem a little complicated but it’s very logical and you could also easily create a script or plugin that takes care of it for you. These new App Store short links look so good you can even place them on ads and billboards. At Domino Research, we can assist in taking care of the short links for you.
Further info
In case there are multiple results the App Store will automatically show search results for the query used. Quite handy to be used directly for searching the App Store.
In addition, it’s a great incentive for companies and indie developers to use unique names in the app store.