Which one is better? Cloaking actually creates a file that will spidered by the search engines. It looks like website.com/product-name.html. We could track cloaked links and the affiliate ID will never be revealed except Clickbank links. Recommends style links look like website.com/recommends/product-name. We can track this. I have not used recommends-style links but I will if it has huge advantage over cloaked links. What is best way to present an affiliate links on websites and emails? Any suggestions?
I prefer the cloaked links. I use Ninja Link Cloaker which you can use to redirect to any page you want. Say for example you have a clickbank link. You could have your website.com/product.html redirect directly to the product's homepage with your affiliate cookie still there. So it doesn't look like an affiliate link at all.
You are right about cloaking – it looks like your website owns that product. I use affiliate defender for cloaking. I was planning to user “recommends styleâ€. OK so 1 vote for cloaking With cloaking, the only annoying thing is that no matter what link you click, the URL remains the same… I’m not sure if it is annoying to others... Are you tracking it? What do you use to track them? I have utrack and some other tracker script that I am planning to use..
I tried using the .htaccess redirects for affiliate links. I don't think the clicks can be tracked. I tested the clicks. They don't even show up in the cpanel's awstats. If I use a cloaking software like affiliate defender, atleast the stats show up in cpanel and also, I can put statcounter code at the bottom... Here's my question - If I cloak using affiliate defender, which puts javascript (uses --- document.write(unescape) function) to redirect and if you open the file you cannot the read the affiliate ID, and the actual affiliate URL, will the search engines penalize my site? Currently, my cloaked link file (named affiliate_link.html) shows up in the search engines. Is there any harm in doing this?