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I've seen a couple of Wordpress Plugins that claim to mask the original links with ones that look like an internal link. <snip>
What I'd like to know is whether I'll get penalised by Google and other SE's if I were to use <this kind of plugin>?
[edited by: caveman at 11:10 pm (utc) on Dec. 28, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed site specifics and site mentions, per TOS. [/edit]
Some people believe you may be actually penalized by SE's for not masking affiliate URLs but that's not likely unless you have a spam blog with no real content and a gazillion affiliate links.
More importantly you might want to use one of those wordpress plugins to make your affiliate links more friendly to your users.
[edited by: caveman at 3:06 am (utc) on Dec. 29, 2008]
[edit reason] Edited per TOS #24 [/edit]
Since by their nature aff sites, or sites that derive significant income from aff efforts, are not showing unique content, from the SE's POV the onus is on the individual sites to provide unique content and/or otherwise add value.
Sites that are unique and provide added value to the Web are very, very unlikely to be penalized or banned, if that is their only issue from the SE's POV. But so-called thin affiliate sites that provide no added value are likely to have a very short shelf life.
There are plenty of successful sites out there that do not hide aff links.
