Link cloaking is when you encrypt the link in some fashion or make it less visible. One simple way to do this is using tinyURL's, more advanced applications use PHP redirects. It is an effective way to prevent commission stealing from adware while also making your commercial efforts less obvious. I cloak all links on my websites in some fashion.
Thanks, I could see it is useful. By the way, many/some/most webmasters/SEO consultants want to add backlinks to their websites/blogs. Hence, they want to place their own links instead of "cloak links" -- to add their Pagerank / SERP. Does "cloak links" influence Pagerank / SERP?
Cloaked links would actually be better for the serps. Most people cloak affiliate links or referral links, so the redirect is actually a better looking URL than before. *Ultimately the link is redirecting to the same place though.
C.Whyte, interesting! I don't know that cloaked links is better for Serps. Both of you, thanks for sharing. More questions: Could I check cloaked links' PRs (with page rank checker)? Will it return 0/#N/A? OR their PRs = original links' PRs?
C.Whyte, I went to Google's Webmaster Tool to check. Found this: Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#3 I think what Google says doesn't agree with what you said. Not to say that you are wrong, but perhaps I didn't get what you mean. Please explain further.
To cloak or not to cloak? I'm not too sure about the ranking of cloaked links in the serps, but i use cloaking just to hide my affiliate links. I guess it depends on your niche as well. As Internet Marketers, we are more than likely to spot a link that is not cloaked and then just go and purchase it under our own affiliate link, however, in a non IM niche, i would think most potential customers may not know what an affiliate is, therefore you may not need to cloak your link.
Cloaking is one kind of URL Masking. Its hiding the actual URL under another visible URL and when someone clicks on the visible URL, it redirects to the hidden URL. Cloaked URL doesn't help in SERP if 301 is not used.
Thanks, JamesW2983. Cloaked links are mostly used as affiliate links - I guess. This is interesting. digitech, could you explain further, esp. what is 301?