Best code to hide affiliate links

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miseo

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Dec 6, 2007
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What do you think is the best code to hide affiliate links. Adwords has been giving me OK and Poor scores so I have blammed my crappy affiliate links instead of my possibly thin affiliate site;) Here are the options I'm looking at, which would you recommend and are there pros/cons I should be aware of?

Meta Refresh

<html>
<head>
<title>Affiliate</title>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; url=http://www.affiliate.com/?ref=123" />
</head>
<body>
<p>You are being taken to the correct page.
<br />If the page does load after 5 seconds,
<a href="<A href="http://www.affiliate.com/?ref=123">click">http://www.affiliate.com/?ref=123">click here</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>

PHP 301

To use the PHP 301, just save it as affiliate.htm and upload it to /go/affiliate.htm
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http: affiliate link");
exit();

.htaccess 301
This code tells the server that /go/affiliate.htm should be redirected to affiliate.com/?ref=123. No extra files are needed, just upload this script and whenever you want to link to affiliate.com/?ref=123 just link to /go/affiliate.htm.

Redirect 301 /go/affiliate.htm http: affiliate link

JavaScript redirect
The code tells the browser that the page is located somewhere else and sends the browser there.
<script type="text/javascript">window.location="<A href="http://www.affiliate.com/?ref=123";</script">http://www.affiliate.com/?ref=123";</script>
 


Excellent, thanks. Would you use a tinyurl too or is that just that a crack head move?
 
Yeah, I would avoid any type of link cloaking solution that is not your own. For a while I used cloakreferer and offercloak. When each of them decided to go down for a while, though, my dead links were out there wasting space.
 
uhhh... as far as I know adwords and many other major search engines don't permit redirects

correct me if I'm wrong here
 
For one, meta refreshes can sometimes hide your referrer if you're the paranoid type.

I have been able to get some campaigns approved with meta refreshes in place. They last longer than if you just direct link.
 
offto.net does work, for blanking referer, if your comfortable using a public service. but these guys are looking to how to mask their actual affiliate links I think, not blank referrer.
in that case, ya a meta. A meta doesn't really blank all referers. I know this from observation. maybe 50% if your lucky

I don't know how adwords would take to that... from experience they have been on a big no no trip about redirects of any sort
 
php header. never needed to use anything else.
I also created a hop script. so I just use domain.com?linkid=11 and in the db 11 is a website, i pull it in the php page and header redir.

very simple, very effective, very free.
 
Yeah, php will work just as well. If you ARE looking to mask referrers than use a meta refresh or, better yet, a double meta refresh that will filter based on whether or not the referrer is wiped. You could also use cloakrefer.com to shorten the url AND hide the referrer...but the referrer part doesn't always work.

It does work pretty well for AdWords. Read more over at shoe's (yeah yeah, I know)...

Are Your Google AdWords Getting Nuked? - ShoeMoney®
 
I just do domain.com/SOMETHING and redirect it with htaccess + php header: location

I think I have posted the full code to do it some time ago
 
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