Cloaking my domain name when referring traffic

[DavidB_REE]

I'm a Clickbank affiliate, preparing to send a large amount of traffic to a Clickbank merchant.

I want to prevent the merchant from seeing the domain I am sending traffic from. How do I do this?

I will also use a robots.txt file so the domain cannot be found on a Web search. (It's all PPC traffic.)

Despite knowing about things like robots.txt files, I am very new to Web tech stuff, so please explain clearly. I've never used Javascript or PHP, so need a little context on these things.

Why do I want to hide this? Simply, I've found a major keyword from which I can get traffic for 5 cents, while the merchant is paying 75 cents on the more obvious keywords. I want to protect my creative discovery.

And, just to be clear, I'm not asking simply how to cloak the affiliate link from the buyer (though I want to accomplish that at the same time)... I am asking how to cloak my entire referring domain from the Web traffic stats of the merchant I'm sending traffic to.

Thank you in advance for your help!

David

[erikcw]

How about registering a new damain, and sending your PPC traffic to it, and then forwarding the traffic from your domain to the affiliate link. This should "launder" your traffic...

[DavidB_REE]

I did that after my first post. I know very little tech stuff, but I was advised to use PHP so the redirects were server-side so that peoples browers and their settings didn't matter.

Well, I got an odd result! (The real oddity is the 3rd test, below.)

Let's say my preselling page is:
realdomain.com
And I created a mirror site like this:
cloakingdomain.com
And I was sending traffic to a Clickbank aff link:
affiliate.merchant.hop.clickbank.net

I tested this by substituting a 3rd domain I own for merchant.com, which I'll call:
testdestination.com

OK, the first thing I tried was a regular link from realdomain.com, to cloakingdomain.com/product.php

That file looked like this:

<?php
header("Location: ht*p://www.testdestination.com");
?>

I then checked the logs for testdestination, and the referrer was realdomain.com. No dice!

Then I tried:

<?php
header("Location: ht*p://www.cloakingdomain.com");
header("Location: ht*p://www.testdestination.com");
?>

Same result.

Then I tried a PHP file on BOTH domains, like this:

First, a regular link on the real name to a php file on the same domain, realdomain.com/product.php

<?php
header("Location: ht*p://www.cloakingdomain.com/product2.php");
?>

Then, this on the cloaking domain:

<?php
header("Location: ht*p://www.testdestination.com/");
?>

Here's where it gets ODD. That setup shows ZERO traffic on testingdestination.com! Competely invisible. But I know the traffic logs are updated, because when I go to the log directory to pull them, that hit shows up. But NONE of the traffic. I clicked on the double-redirects a dozen times!

So, lots of sales and ZERO traffic looks fishy-- can't do that. (Didn't even know it was possible.)

Anyone know how I CAN accomplish this?

Thanks!

David

[edited by: Receptional at 12:43 pm (utc) on June 28, 2005]
[edit reason] Onle make live links to example.com or real news please. [/edit]