Should you nofollow cloaked affiliate links?

[Krass]

using the redirection plugin in wordpress to cloak my aff links. i've set it up to do 302 redirect to the offer, i'm wondering if it's necessary to nofollow the link as well

 

[Calamari]

I think the bigger question here is should you bother cloaking your affiliate links.

I don't do either, rank just fine.

 

[Golan]

Two reason for cloaking the aff links:
1. Look better, you kinda cheat your visitors ( doesn't matter in the niche where your visitors are not tech savvy, like home moms, they have no idea what's the difference )
2. Getting the clicking stats

In either case, no matter what, i remember Cutz or someone else from G recommended to nofollow them. Because this is not an editorial link, you don't recommend it to your visitor heartily, you earn on the fact the visitor clicks on the link. Which is fully legit but it's good to say to SE's this link is not editorial. Kinda ethics and it's understandable logic.

 

[CCarter]

If they are cloaked how would search engines even see them? (unless I'm not understanding what's being asked)

 

[Golan]

If they are cloaked how would search engines even see them? (unless I'm not understanding what's being asked)

Why SE's even need to see them?

I understand the question as " serpwoo.com/?#blablamother.affid=5687451 => mysite.com/go/serpwoo " , smth like this...

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yes, you should nofollow them. It's not editorial and it's basically a paid link.

I personally set up 302 redirects so search engines understand that the link is temporary and subject to change.

I also disguise the links in a .com/out/product manner. That's because my vertical's users are computer and internet savvy. It disarms them. I don't worrry about my link being copy and pasted to remove my aff code though. I breed goodwill and provide quality content.

 

[Krass]

I think the bigger question here is should you bother cloaking your affiliate links.

I don't do either, rank just fine.

Sure not a problem with ranking the site, but in my situation I'm linking to a huge ecomm site that sells the product. So I'm worried that by linking to the ecomm site, the site will end up ranking above me in the serps

Why SE's even need to see them?

I understand the question as " serpwoo.com/?#blablamother.affid=5687451 => mysite.com/go/serpwoo " , smth like this...

@CCarter yup this is what i'm talking about. Maybe the correct term isn't cloaking? I'm not sure.

Yes, you should nofollow them. It's not editorial and it's basically a paid link.

I personally set up 302 redirects so search engines understand that the link is temporary and subject to change.

I also disguise the links in a .com/out/product manner. That's because my vertical's users are computer and internet savvy. It disarms them. I don't worrry about my link being copy and pasted to remove my aff code though. I breed goodwill and provide quality content.

I do 302's also but never knew the reason for it. Just picked it up from a blog somewhere. I also remember reading that if you don't hide your aff links this way people can somehow hijack your commissions? I don't know.

Anyway i've went ahead and nofollowed everything to be safe, plus i now know more about the subject. Thanks guys!

 

[lion1978]

hijack your commissions

yup either that or get you kicked off the affiliate program.

for the hijacking part, it ofcourse depends on how vunerable your site is, to various kinds of exploits.
for the getting kicked of the affiliate program, I wont even tell how easy that is, but it is really is so easy that even a 6 year old could do that to you.

 

[knownerror]

Well... personally I'm against the "no-follow" in general. All it does is state that your site (as in you) are aware of manipulating Google and other search engines. I just redirect affiliate links and make them at least look good by doing something like: /out/product/

 

[juliantrueflynn]

using the redirection plugin in wordpress to cloak my aff links. i've set it up to do 302 redirect to the offer, i'm wondering if it's necessary to nofollow the link as well

As a rule of thumb I nofollow any links that are user generated content (I don't review before posted) or promotional content. This is just going off the purpose of letting search engines know what you are not vouching for as relevant to the page but still linking to it anyways.

I think the bigger question here is should you bother cloaking your affiliate links.

I don't do either, rank just fine.

You get more control from cloaking for quicker scaling on your site. Example: changing 1 offer for another but keep the same link to it. Also more appealing for users for sharing/saving/remembering.

 

[Golan]

Well... personally I'm against the "no-follow" in general. All it does is state that your site (as in you) are aware of manipulating Google and other search engines.

No, in opposite. Google's position is that leaving the aff links dofollow makes spiders think those are editorial links and thus is manipulating Google.

 

[juliantrueflynn]

No, in opposite. Google's position is that leaving the aff links dofollow makes spiders think those are editorial links and thus is manipulating Google.

To go off what Golan said I actually had a bigger site manually reviewed and they pointed out a couple banners we had on other sites from charities we donated to that Google wanted nofollow or removed. So yea, they want anything that's a 'paid link' to be nofollowed, talk about gray area.

 

[knownerror]

No, in opposite. Google's position is that leaving the aff links dofollow makes spiders think those are editorial links and thus is manipulating Google.

Comes down to Google identifying what is and what isn't an affiliate link. I redirect links to make them look clean and never bother using nofollow. Never had a problem and won't go out of my way to please Google when it comes to nofollow. Some have different experience however.

EDIT: Just wanted to add it is just a matter of time when Google can do this work for you. That's why it is currently in place.

 

[qwianghomingh]

Masking/Cloacking/Redirecting affiliate links with nofollow is normal where you are allowed by your affiliate programme. Amazon doesn't really like the masking of links to avoid confusion of users, but big site like the wire cutter does it, probably for tracking.

I nofollow most of my affiliate links, but if I insert something manually, I might forget nofollowing it. Though, I'm not really interested in what google says.