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