Question: Recently there has been a lot of hype about URL Shortening. I guess some URL Shortening services even offer tracking stats. But, doesn't adding one more level of look-up to the original URL affect page ranking in any way? Just curious to know.

Answer: 
It might, right now, but I wouldn't expect that to last for too long. SEO and PageRank are subjects where a lot of guesswork is passed off as wisdom.

If you're that obsessively worried about your PageRank, here's what you do. Take that energy, and put it into creating content that people want to link to. You'll get better results.

People buy stuff. Robots don't.
No it does not affect page ranking. But the url should not link to a bad neighbour hood like porn, viagara etc. URL shortening is mean to shorten and place it instead of placing huge url. You can try [zxc9.com](http://zxc9.com) and also its API for your services.