If you want to know more about what a bit.ly url refers to, here is a PHP function that may be of use to you. It first checks what the destination URL is, and what the title is. Unfortunately this requires two different bit.ly API calls.
Note:
function bitly($url,&$title) { $login="mylogin"; $apikey="my-api-key"; $bitlyurl="http://api.bit.ly/v3/expand?shortUrl=".urlencode($url)."&login=$login&apiKey=$apikey&format=json"; $inf=json_decode(simpleget($bitlyurl),true); $code=$inf["status_code"]; if($code != 200) { print "bitly($url) Error code $code\n"; return; } $ret=$inf["data"]["expand"][0]["long_url"]; $bitlyurl="http://api.bit.ly/v3/info?shortUrl=".urlencode($url)."&login=$login&apiKey=$apikey&format=json"; $inf=json_decode(simpleget($bitlyurl),true); $code=$inf["status_code"]; if($code != 200) { print "bitly($url) Error code $code\n"; return; } $title=$inf["data"]["info"][0]["title"]; print "bitly($url) title=$title ; url=$ret\n"; return $ret; } function simpleget($url) { $ch=curl_init($url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 6); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 3); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "simpleget"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); return curl_exec($ch); }