Redirects of affiliate links

**GaryTheScubaGuy** · 16 June 2011, 8:22 pm

.....Huh?

**rak** · 16 June 2011, 9:41 pm

thoughts on directing googlebot link through to a content rich page eg.. casino review

and the human click through to the casino?

**GaryTheScubaGuy** · 16 June 2011, 9:54 pm

That's called cloaking and Google will slap you for it.

**rak** · 17 June 2011, 3:13 am

is all cloaking bad? or are their types of cloaking which would be seen as acceptable?

**Frank Benjamin** · 17 June 2011, 5:03 am

Originally Posted by GaryTheScubaGuy

Hi Laura,

The difference between a PhP Redirect and a Meta Refresh is that a redirect can still log referrer information. What this means is that your Affiliate Managers can see exactly where your traffic is coming from. A redirect simply *redirects* thru one of your domains and can still display information that will let people know who are looking, where you been sending your links.

A smart way to hide your referrer information is to use a the Meta Refresh. Here’s the code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns=" https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0;URL=AFFILIATE URL HERE">
<title>SITE TITLE HERE</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Load this into a text file and name it whatever you want with a .html extension.

Gary, would this be your recommended redirect solution?

**BettingBots.com** · 19 June 2011, 7:56 am

I've been using the Pretty Link WP plugin with 307 redirects, no follow included, and the /go/ directory is excluded from robots.

Any problem with that do you think Gary? Would I be better to change it to 301's?

Thanks,

~ Paul

**robertmendonca184** · 1 July 2011, 6:29 am

I have not been able to clear these things to you. I have been using various version of redirecting method in my Wordpress sites. This is quite easier than the PHP solution also.

**betcomparative** · 3 July 2011, 12:55 pm

Hello,

I've been using GoCodes for WordPress over the past month, and I'm not sure this is the best option. I mean, some redirection don't work at all and, worse, I'm not sure that all affiliation parameters in the URL are kept, as the number of visits to my site is increasing and my affiliation revenue is decreasing.

So my question is: "is there a safe way to hide those links without losing tracking? Is Simple Link Cloaker for Word Press better?

Sincerely,
Amar

**DaftDog** · 3 July 2011, 2:19 pm

Originally Posted by betcomparative

Hello,

I've been using GoCodes for WordPress over the past month, and I'm not sure this is the best option. I mean, some redirection don't work at all and, worse, I'm not sure that all affiliation parameters in the URL are kept, as the number of visits to my site is increasing and my affiliation revenue is decreasing.

So my question is: "is there a safe way to hide those links without losing tracking? Is Simple Link Cloaker for Word Press better?

Sincerely,
Amar

I would not reccommend using the GoCodes plug-in on your WordPress site as this plug-in was last updated 751 days ago and is only tested compatable up to WP version 2.8. WordPress has changed significantly since then with the current version being 3.1.4

**betcomparative** · 3 July 2011, 2:36 pm

Hello Ixian,

Thanks for the information. So, what would you recommend? BTW, I can see that you use some kind of redirection on your website, what type is it?

Sincerely,

**DaftDog** · 4 July 2011, 5:57 am

Originally Posted by betcomparative

Hello Ixian,

Thanks for the information. So, what would you recommend? BTW, I can see that you use some kind of redirection on your website, what type is it?

Sincerely,

I would suggest using the code that GarytheScubaGuy mentioned earlier in this thread as it is the simplest and most easy to use.

The redirection on my site slotszar.co.za is built into the theme I purchased for this site.

**betcomparative** · 4 July 2011, 6:37 am

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not sure I'll go this way, as the meta refresh implies to create and upload one file per link and I have more than 150 links to create...

Have someone already used this kind of code in his .htaccess for that purpose?

Code:

RedirectPermanent /my-hidden-link/ https://www.affiliate-domain.com/my-aff-tracker

The pro is it's just one file to edit and upload, are they any con? Will I lose some data in the tracking URL?

Sincerely,

**jarvi** · 4 July 2011, 3:22 pm

Here's another fairly simple one from the StudioPress guys. Strangely though couldn't get it to work on one site. Didn't try much and need to revisit sometime.

Simple URLs

**ronyqc** · 5 July 2011, 10:54 pm

What is the difference between 301 and 302 redirect? .... sorry for my ignorance about the subject

**xecutable** · 6 July 2011, 1:09 am

Originally Posted by ronyqc

What is the difference between 301 and 302 redirect? .... sorry for my ignorance about the subject

301 means that the page has moved permanently, 302 means that the page has moved temporarily.

Despite the fact many people actually need 301, there was an article that most of them use 302. What they also wrote is that Google, does not take your word for granted, and actually checks itself, if it's really 302 or you have meant 301. The author of the article is Jonathan Hochman, Yale graduate

**GCG** · 7 July 2011, 4:18 pm

I use this : mydomain.com/go/tothiscasino.php

code for tothiscasino.php

<?php header("Location: theaffiliatelinkishere");
?>

can this trigger a google penalty, I think I have one now

?

I should have used theotherdomain.com/redirect.php?id=tothiscasino (a php script with a text file for the casino codes) right ?

I am looking at 2000+ pages to correct if mydomain.com/go/tothiscasino.php is bad for seo...........hope not !!

Looking for advise pls.

**Isaiah** · 27 July 2011, 5:27 pm

In my point of view, maybe we should forget about 302's as there is still some discussions for these on air, go on masking with 301's through your site's .htaccess, or even better your httpd.conf (if you are on dedicated server), put them rel=nofollow and disallow them on your robots.txt.

Going this way, by first sight it looks OK, but here are two problems i am facing though:

- 301 redirects (no idea for 302's, i guess the same occurs) are being CACHED from today's modern browsers. This mean if you update an affiliate link and the visitors already clicked to it at previous days, they will NOT redirected to the new updated aff link, unless if they delete their browser cache&internet files.

Solution : Simple URLs from StudioPress is working good for Wordpress, Yoast recommends this one too and he is already using this to his site, it really solves the 301 redirects caching problem.

- The aff links are identified as 301 Moved Permanently no matter if these are internal or external, check : https://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ .

Solution : No idea, let me know!

* The 301's caching problem is detected when using server side's http.conf, don't know if this problem exists also when using .htaccess

**betcomparative** · 27 July 2011, 6:52 pm

Hello Isaiah,

Originally Posted by Isaiah

The 301's caching problem is detected when using server side's http.conf, don't know if this problem exists also when using .htaccess

I don't think so, I've been using .htaccess redirections on a lot of websites in the past and never had an issue with the cache. But, who knows?

After all, I'm wondering if just adding a rel="nofollow" to the affiliation links and not bothering to hide them wouldn't be better. Any input?

Sincerely,

**bonusbetting** · 27 July 2011, 9:41 pm

I have only just got my tracking sorted properly and I haven't decided what to do (if anything) about hiding affiliate links yet.
Have any of you ever measured what effect masking your aff links actually has on click-through rates?

My personal feeling is that I would rather a website show me what URL I'm going to, and I don't mind if it is an aff link - if it is what I'm looking for.
Are there really significant numbers of people who will not click a link with with an obvious aff code, but will click if it is masked?

It's pretty obvious that my site has affiliate links anyway, at least to anyone who understands what an affiliate is. I'm not sure it's worth bothering.
Would love to hear if anyone has run numbers on this.

**freebetking** · 28 July 2011, 2:38 am

I've never bothered masking my affiliate links...bigger fish to fry.

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