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Jun
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The interesting discussion between Rand and Jeremy had me thinking about some of the things affiliates do to protect their links. I am talking about link cloaking — the art of hiding links.
We can hide links from our potential customer (in the case of affiliate links), and we can hide them from the search engines as well (as in the case of reciprocal links, paid links, etc.).
While I think cloaking affiliate links to prevent others from stealing your commissions is useful, I am not encouraging you to use the techniques I am about to explain. I certainly think it is very important to understand link cloaking in order to protect yourself when you are buying products, services or links.
When I am reading a product endorsement, I usually mouse over the link to see if it is an affiliate link. Why? I don’t mind the blogger making a commission’; but, If I see he or she is trying to hide it via redirects, Java-script, etc. I don’t perceive it is as an endorsement. I feel it is a concealed ad. When I see <aff>, editor’s note, etc. I feel I can trust the endorsement.
Another interesting technique is the cloaking of links to the search engines. The reasoning behind this concept is so that your link partners think you endorse them, but you tell the search engines that you don’t. Again, I am not supporting this.
Cloaking links to the potential customers.
Several of the techniques, I’ve seen are:
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