Comments on: Cloaking Links: Why Bother

By: Mark Mason

Mark Mason — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:03:42 +0000

No problem, Jonathon.

My belief is that quality score is not impacted by redirects as long as they are not cloaking the final URL (fooling the user), cookie stuffing (stealing commissions), or mismatched with the add. That last one means that your final url has to match the display URL. The intermediate url (the cloaking URL) does not need to match.

HOWEVER — I am not a PPC guy. All of my experiences with PPC have been painful .

By: Jonathon Weston

Jonathon Weston — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:49:26 +0000

Hey Mark,

Apologies if you don’t like people “reopening” old posts, but I’ve always wondered if Google spots php redirects and the like, and lowers your PPC quality scores…

What do you think? I haven’t tested this yet, but will do so soon. Would be interesting if it gave a point of QS… but if it did I would have thought it would be common knowledge by now!

Cheers,
Jonathon

By: Tony Murphy

Tony Murphy — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:57:02 +0000

cool, thanks for the prompt response as well

I’ll keep an eye or two on your blog

By: Mark Mason

Mark Mason — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:01:30 +0000

Tony;

It is a great way to go because it looks clean and professional. It also allows you to change where the link points to if you need to.

The only possible issue would be tracking. It is good to be able to track the number of clicks and where they are coming from. If you can do that (using GA or something), then I would says that your solution is just as good as mine.

By: Tony Murphy

Tony Murphy — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:45:18 +0000

Hi Mark,

I create a subdomain for each affilliate link that I have. Do you think this is a good way to go?

cheers
Tony

By: Personal Edge Insights - Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach » Archive » The one CRITICAL mistake many affiliate marketers make

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:41:23 +0000

[...] Cloaking Links: Why Bother [...]

By: How to Cookie Stuff | Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

How to Cookie Stuff | Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:38:14 +0000

[...] Cloaking Links: Why Bother To stuff cookies. Cookie stuffing is a trick beyond the scope of this article. If someone tries to sell you cookie stuffing software, run the other way. To mislead people about the destination link. If you are cloaking links to trick … [...]

By: shane at making-money-blogging.com/blog

shane at making-money-blogging.com/blog — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:02:37 +0000

Hey Mark.
Great post. I personally dont cloak links. I probably should just so I can track them and see whats happening with them. I agree with christian and he/she makes a good point about how the link itself looks and how it affects branding.
My personal feeling is that cloaking and hiding is probably only neccesary in the IM market, other than what christian mentioned.
Defiante good resource here, I’ll be linking to it soon
Oh you missed Aarons meeting dude, tisk tisk, or were you BBQ’ing with Garry. Hey give me an invite next you two BBQ, I make a killer cedar smoked steak

By: Mark Mason

Mark Mason — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:15:07 +0000

@Forest — glad you are planing to read the eBook. Very interested in your impression of it.

@Mark — I am big into “full disclosure” and transparency. Glad to hear you agree with that.

@Garry — Eat more beef!

@Christian — I completely agree with that, but must admit that I had never considered it. That’s really another reason that I like this method — I think “recommends” in the URL gives a clean look. Thanks!

@linuxhat — excellent point that I did not mention here. Thanks for adding that. This is absolutely critical in many case – especially PPC.

By: linuxhat

linuxhat — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:41:18 +0000

Another BIG reason is to keep the source of the traffic a secret. Which I suppose could be the other half of the theft deterrent argument. If you have stumbled upon some great traffic source, you can bet that whoever runs that affiliate program at the top, is going to want to get in on it, and share it with the rest of the affiliates out there. You want the referring URL reported to their stats program to be your cloak script, not your secret traffic source.

By: Christian at GuruReporter.com

Christian at GuruReporter.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:29:23 +0000

I would add one more positive to your list of why one should consider cloaking their links and that is professionalism. By having a cloaked link that reads well creates a much better image in the visitor’s mind than having a long, ugly affiliate link.

By: Garry Conn

Garry Conn — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:55:11 +0000

I need to make room for a guest appearance from the Cow Slayer on Wed.

Oh cool, so we’re having a cook out on Wednesday. Wonderful!!! Tell you what, I’ll bring the steak and you bring the drinks… only thing I need to know is how you like your COW cooked.

By: Mark Sierra at MeAndMyDrum.com

Mark Sierra at MeAndMyDrum.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:33:27 +0000

I think the thing that you helped me with the most, Mark, is me recognizing that I need to update my disclosure policy to reflect that I use links of this nature. I’ve recently started cloaking my affiliate links. The thing is is that if you have them out in the open or cloak them, it still raises an eyebrow for the user with the keen eye. So I guess in my mind, the best way to think of using them is: 1) update once, populate many; and, 2) emphasize that this is a recommended link by including the “recommends” directory in the url.

By: Forest Parks

Forest Parks — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:37:32 +0000

Ahhh cool, looking forward to the Guest appearance. I still have not gotten around to reading your Ebook but am looking forward to that too!

So much to do, so little time …. need to make money too

By: Mark Mason

Mark Mason — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:49:54 +0000

@Forest — thanks, man. I had planned that post for Wed, but may push it to Friday. I need to make room for a guest appearance from the Cow Slayer on Wed.

@Josh. Thank you very much sir. I agree with you completely, but I keep seeing link cloaking products based completely on “theft deterrence.” Guess we just don’t get it. LOL

@Megan. Thank you. Completely agree with you. This has happened to me more than once already – usually because an affiliate changes domain names or software. Some people take this even further, and make the link completely generic — “To see my current recommendation for autoresponders, click here…” I don’t really do that, but it can make sense in things like eBooks where you completely lose control of the link.

By: Megan

Megan — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:13:12 +0000

Good Article! – besides tracking another reason to cloak or relay affiliate links is that sometimes the original affiliate link changes and then if you have posted that link here or there in forums or whatnot all those links are no longer valid – if you cloak or relay the link in some way then you just go to your cloaked link and change the distination (original affiliate link) to the new one and all your previous linking stays current.

hth ~megan

By: Josh Spaulding

Josh Spaulding — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:39:13 +0000

Excellent post, Mark.

It’s always humorous to hear people say they cloak links to hide the fact that it’s an affiliate link. If someone wants to get rid of your aff. i.d., so they can order through their own link or just to spite you, they’re going to do it whether it’s “cloaked” or not. In most cases cloaked links are easier to point out than aff links.

I don’t believe I would argue with any aspect of this article. Great job!

By: Forest Parks

Forest Parks — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:53:14 +0000

What an excellent article!!

I have been thinking about cloaking a ittle and didn’t see a need to do it. However the tracking could be very important.

My stats tracking is awful and I have not yet sat down and seriously worked out how to grow any of my sites based on this. I will be looking forward to your next article.