What is cloaking links?

Example :
your aff link is something like this
http://www.affnetwork.com?id=598fwef...subid=hGSg45i7

cloaking this link would be to turn this link into something "nicer"
www.yoursite.com/redirect ( which would redirect to the link above)

i think there is a cloaking forum on here with lots of threads that you can read to find out these things!

Cloaking is a technique where in the content presented to the robot is different from that presented to the user's browser.

Thanks! - learnt something new today Never knew about cloaking before...

when the content of the user's browser is different from the content of the search engine.

It is black hat seo method.

so what exactly is cloaking when you're advertising and paying facebook/google to run traffic?

There is an awesome wordpress plugin called "Affiliate link cloaking" . It cloaks a link and also shows statistics of clicks.

cloaking affiliate links is the art of showing your visitors an internal link when they mouse over an affiliate link so that the visitor doesn’t think they are leaving your site.

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable. The purpose of cloaking is sometimes to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed (black hat SEO). However, it can also be a functional (though antiquated) technique for informing search engines of content they would not otherwise be able to locate because it is embedded in non-textual containers such as video or certain Adobe Flash components.

Originally Posted by bloomtools

Cloaking is a technique where in the content presented to the robot is different from that presented to the user's browser.

Is clocking your anchor text is safe from Google eyes?

Or it can help your site to index?

One more thing is it a Black Hat technique?

Thanks for asking so many question.

Originally Posted by charlesando

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable. The purpose of cloaking is sometimes to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed (black hat SEO). However, it can also be a functional (though antiquated) technique for informing search engines of content they would not otherwise be able to locate because it is embedded in non-textual containers such as video or certain Adobe Flash components.

That's actually a different type of cloaking than what the OP was asking about in his first post.

I believe the OP was asking about cloaking links. Affiliate programs typically have really ugly urls when you use your ref code. In most cases it's really obvious where the target page is and a lot of people will just bypass the affiliate link and go straight to the product page. Some people do it because they're suspicious of the ?ref=xyz in the url, others might want to just sign up themselves so they'll get the commission instead of you. To combat that people like to cloak their affiliate links.

For example instead of making backlinks to a clickbank offer with your hoplink "affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net" then on your site "yourdomain.com" create a redirect from "somegreatproduct" to your hoplink. You can make the redirect in your htaccess or do a metarefresh from a webpage, either way though you now have a url something like "yourdomain.com/somegreatproduct" which is much nicer looking url to give out or make backlinks to. (You can accomplish the same goal using a url shortening service like bit.ly but it won't be as appealing a url as using your own redirects.)

Now your prospects have to click on "yourdomain.com/somegreatproduct" to get to your affiliate offer sales page. Once they get there they'll still be able to sign up as a affiliate themselves, but for some reason not as many people will do that as would if you actually had them click on "affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net". For whatever reason, doing this seems to have a positive effect on the click through ratio to a sales page.


You gave a good explanation about what cloaking a site is and you were accurate in how you described it. But presenting different content to the search engines than you do to real traffic is a completely different type of cloaking.

When discussing the topic of cloaking there's basically three different types of cloaking (there's actually even a few more, but these three are the most common).

1. cloaking your links - typically whitehat (blackhat if it's deceptive). Purpose is to a)make it less likely for people to strip your aff code, b)make your ref links shorter for promoting on sites like twitter, c) make your ref links look more trustworthy.
2. cloaking the referrer - definitely blackhat. Purpose is to hide the non-allowed source of traffic your sending to CPA offers and make it look like legit traffic from a whitehat promotion.
3. cloaking your site - definitely blackhat. Purpose is to present content to the SE spiders that will give you SEO benefit, while presenting different content to actual visitors that might give your offers a higher conversion rate.

This is an example of why it's important to be specific when discussing topics. Asking a question about why cloaking is important or what it's good for is likely to get a lot of unrelated or conflicting answers unless you're specific in the type of cloaking you're talking about. The same is true about topics like "duplicate content" and many other SEO topics.

Many general terms are used for many different topics and an answer that might be true for one specific topic will be wrong for a different topic, even though it sounds perfectly logical in both situations. That simple fact alone has been the cause of many SEO myths and bad information being passed on.

So to a certain extent the people that deal with traffic arbitrage are also a lot into cloaking?

Originally Posted by GreyWolf

That's actually a different type of cloaking than what the OP was asking about in his first post.

I believe the OP was asking about cloaking links. Affiliate programs typically have really ugly urls when you use your ref code. In most cases it's really obvious where the target page is and a lot of people will just bypass the affiliate link and go straight to the product page. Some people do it because they're suspicious of the ?ref=xyz in the url, others might want to just sign up themselves so they'll get the commission instead of you. To combat that people like to cloak their affiliate links.

For example instead of making backlinks to a clickbank offer with your hoplink "affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net" then on your site "yourdomain.com" create a redirect from "somegreatproduct" to your hoplink. You can make the redirect in your htaccess or do a metarefresh from a webpage, either way though you now have a url something like "yourdomain.com/somegreatproduct" which is much nicer looking url to give out or make backlinks to. (You can accomplish the same goal using a url shortening service like bit.ly but it won't be as appealing a url as using your own redirects.)

Now your prospects have to click on "yourdomain.com/somegreatproduct" to get to your affiliate offer sales page. Once they get there they'll still be able to sign up as a affiliate themselves, but for some reason not as many people will do that as would if you actually had them click on "affiliate.vendor.hop.clickbank.net". For whatever reason, doing this seems to have a positive effect on the click through ratio to a sales page.


You gave a good explanation about what cloaking a site is and you were accurate in how you described it. But presenting different content to the search engines than you do to real traffic is a completely different type of cloaking.

When discussing the topic of cloaking there's basically three different types of cloaking (there's actually even a few more, but these three are the most common).

1. cloaking your links - typically whitehat (blackhat if it's deceptive). Purpose is to a)make it less likely for people to strip your aff code, b)make your ref links shorter for promoting on sites like twitter, c) make your ref links look more trustworthy.
2. cloaking the referrer - definitely blackhat. Purpose is to hide the non-allowed source of traffic your sending to CPA offers and make it look like legit traffic from a whitehat promotion.
3. cloaking your site - definitely blackhat. Purpose is to present content to the SE spiders that will give you SEO benefit, while presenting different content to actual visitors that might give your offers a higher conversion rate.

This is an example of why it's important to be specific when discussing topics. Asking a question about why cloaking is important or what it's good for is likely to get a lot of unrelated or conflicting answers unless you're specific in the type of cloaking you're talking about. The same is true about topics like "duplicate content" and many other SEO topics.

Many general terms are used for many different topics and an answer that might be true for one specific topic will be wrong for a different topic, even though it sounds perfectly logical in both situations. That simple fact alone has been the cause of many SEO myths and bad information being passed on.

great information... tnx

Originally Posted by mr_vampire

There is an awesome wordpress plugin called "Affiliate link cloaking" . It cloaks a link and also shows statistics of clicks.

A fantastic suggestion! I use this on some of my blackhat networks, and it does prove to be a very useful tool.

When you use a service like bit.ly, **********************************************irie host********************************************** ********, **********************************************irie host, etc., you're technically cloaking



links to shorten the url and make it more manageable compared to a long url. Also, in


affiliate marketing, affiliate links are cloaked to prevent link theft (when someone



replaces your link with theirs in order to steal the commissions when sales are made).

I just learned something from Greywolf, nice explanation

nice question and answers i'll definetly will need these information.

Like a few people have mentioned here there are basically two type of cloaking. The more interesting one is website cloaking. From what I have heard website cloaking used to be a lot more popular a few years back before the search engines developed the technology catch it.

Cloaking is simply:

Showing something different (More SEO friendly, and less user friendly) to the search engines robots than what you show to your visitor.

Originally Posted by WizIMS

Cloaking is simply:

Showing something different (More SEO friendly, and less user friendly) to the search engines robots than what you show to your visitor.

Your explanation is correct, but it's about a different type of cloaking. The OP was asking about cloaking links which is totally different than what you just explained.

Link cloaking has nothing to do with the search engines, instead it's a way to create a link for your visitors that doesn't look like a referral link. The point is to make the link look a little more legitimate and also to make it less likely for them to just type the url into the address bar without your affiliate code.

I made a previous reply in this thread explaning the three main types of cloaking. link cloaking, blanking the referrer, and cloaking for search engines. Each one of those are completely different and done for different reasons.

Originally Posted by GreyWolf

Your explanation is correct, but it's about a different type of cloaking. The OP was asking about cloaking links which is totally different than what you just explained.

Link cloaking has nothing to do with the search engines, instead it's a way to create a link for your visitors that doesn't look like a referral link. The point is to make the link look a little more legitimate and also to make it less likely for them to just type the url into the address bar without your affiliate code.

I made a previous reply in this thread explaning the three main types of cloaking. link cloaking, blanking the referrer, and cloaking for search engines. Each one of those are completely different and done for different reasons.

Oh, sorry

I didn't actually read the thread, and just rushed and answered.

For link cloaking, GreyWolf's explanation is 100% correct. Thanks

Cloaking was a technique that was used in conjunction with doorway pages in order to trick the SE's into giving inflated rank to a site. Doorway pages were pages that were automatically created by scraping various articles and mashing the text together to make keyword rich text that made very little sense to a human but SE's loved. In this way you could create an authority looking site with hundreds of thousands of pages automatically in minutes.

The cloaking part would come in when someone visited the site, it would use Java or something similar to present one page to a normal user and another to the SE's.

Disguising a link by using bitly or whatever is not really cloaking in the traditional BH sense of the word but has started to be used since the original use of the word fell out of favour.

Hope that helps.

BTW if you want to know more about the use of doorway pages and cloaking use the way back when machine to view BHW from a couple of years back, it used to be a hot topic on here at one time but Google always caught on to the various techniques used.

thanks for all of the information

I have to make a post - sorry.

lol I was always wondering what cloaking links was too.. I never bothered looking it up but now I see it is what I expected it to be and that is just masking/renaming a link..

thanks for the clear up.. surprised you did not tell the OP to use the search button lol.. very kind of ya'll.

cloacking to easy reader remember your URL, usually use on affiliate link

Cloaking is a Black Hat technique and it redirect in other page which is not crawled by spider.

cloacking can be defined as changing the redirect

Nice information

Cloaking is a seo technique in which the articles offered to google optimization examine is different from that offered to the user's browser. This is done by delivering articles based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the customer seeking the site. When a customer is identified as look for engines optimization examine, a server-side script delivers a different version of the website,

To make it easier, cloacking is how to fool the search engine. Give the SE what they want to see, and Give the Human what you want them to see.

Hi...friends,

Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique used to deliver one page to search engine for indexing while serving completely difference page for human users.Proponents of cloaking assert that cloaking is necessary in order to protect the meta data, as only the spider is supplied with the meta tags.

Thanks
SEO Company USA

Remember that cloaking if AGAINST Google Adsense TOS. So be careful if you want to use it. Later you will start a thread saying "Why Adsense banned my account? I did not clic any of my ads"

thanks for all the explinations on here, i have heard of cloaking but till now didnt get it or its use.

cloaking is the technique of showing different content to the search engine spider than what is being shown to visitors.