The presumption was that Google is penalizing pages that have affiliate links by increasing CPC and allowing less impressions. Below is an example of the standard link and cloaked link:
Standard
[tkqlhce.tld...]
Cloaked
[mywidgets.tld...]
Since the cloaked link looks like a link to a page on your site then supposedly it doesn’t get the affiliate penalty. Apparently the /link/link.php?P=2881 part of the link causes a redirect to your merchant.
My first thought was that this would be relatively easy for Google to figure out, and wouldn’t make much difference.
It also seems a little bit black hat, and could do more harm than good.
Anyone had any experiences with this, good or bad?
Also, how is this implemented within your site, do you need a database or something? I understand that if you do this you need to ban robots.txt also.
I would prefer to have the visitor land on a page with only internal links to my site, and then hit the affiliate links on the 2nd or 3rd page, but it seems I lose some of my conversions that way.
Just wondering what everyone was seeing.
It also seems a little bit black hat, and could do more harm than good.
A little bit?
One benefit of some of these techniques is that they let you track which links get clicked.
1.I started b/c many Affiliate Marketers :=) believe that Google is ID'ing and specifically looking to penalize affiliate sites. My site has one affiliate link per page, not too bad really, but I decided to do this anyway even though it is probably too late unless mr. adbot comeback and forgets about my old link structure ... I may test a new domain to see if Google will penalize your QS by having Affiliate links ... any way
2. I ALSO did this to prevent some anti-spyware-type programs from possible blocking any content (rumor has it they are blocking some affiliate offers, my offers are simple calls to action, lead gen deals)
BUT
3. I did see an improvement in conversion, significant improvement and I believe it is b/c the link in the status bas is nice and clean with your domain name in it instead of [login.34343...]
WITH regards to this being Black Hat ... I don't see it as now my 165 page site has all of the 165 affiliate links that I have to manage in one nice file called shopCart.php (just for Google). If I need to change links I don't have to go to 165 pages .... just one. Plus, with more scripting I can track the links myself in case I suspect Ask or Google from overstating, which I always do (and I am probably always wrong :-)
if your link is in your anchor code as [numbersgobblygoogk...] or in your code as [mysite.com...] is up to the webmaster. What about tracking links? Having tracking links is Black Hat all of sudden? Managing your links from one page is Black Hat? Either way the links all go to the same place and nothing is hidden from the user except a URL that is not even the destination URL in the first place, as it's already on at least one re-direct already, possibly more, depending on close the offer is to the originally vendor.
Plus a lot of CMS and blog software use a redirection scheme out of the box to tidy up the appearance of the links, etc.
Somebody threw in the word cloaking, perhaps inappropriately. I was only referring to cloaking.
I do think that the specific case of presenting the links all on one page for the spider but on different pages for other visitors could be considered cloaking.
Gabby if you choose to try it open a notebook or some other text editor and put in this code:
<?PHPif ($o == "l1") {$link = "http://www.yourlink.com";} // Default link
if ($o == "l2") {$link = "http://ww.anotherlink.com";}
if ($o == "l3") {$link = "http://www.yetanother.com";}
header("Location: $link"); // Jump to the hiddden URL above
exit();
?>
Save this file as links.php
Then where you want to your link to go in your page use this code:
[yourdomain.com...] for the first link in the file, [yourdomain.com...] for the second etcetera
You can block the link.php file in the robots.txt file but that is probably a no-no to Google ... their robots will follow it anyways :-)
It helps one manage links and the link looks better to the user in the status bar ...enjoy
"Will this cause problems with Google"
but
"Will this cause problems with my Adwords account or is it against the TOS and get my account banned if they find out"
heyday
<?PHPif ($o == "l1") {$link = "http://www.yourlink.com";} // Default link
if ($o == "l2") {$link = "http://ww.anotherlink.com";}
if ($o == "l3") {$link = "http://www.yetanother.com";}header("Location: $link"); // Jump to the hiddden URL above
exit();
?>
This would be fine. A redirect would be generated and Google Adbot will follow it and consider [yourlink.com,...] [ww.anotherlink.com,...] [yetanother.com...] as your landing pages. We have always used 302 redirects for our landing pages and never had an issue with that. Actaully that is how we do A/B testing.
I think that is the proper question. I can't see any violation of the TOS. You are trying to improve your quality score, and it might work for a month or two, then Google will catch in and you will be in the same boat as before. But, there is certainly nothing wrong with redirecting links.
