Hide affiliate links from Google?

[rucanunes]

Hi,

Is there a way/plugin to hide affiliate links from Google?
I've tried a few but they don't work in header and widgets..!

Tks!

[Sergej_AGR]

A plugin for what? Joomla, WP, Drupal, b2evolution, geeklog, pivotx, serendipity, contao, php nuke or xoops?

Regardless of your cms, you can always use php redirects as explained here: http://www.affilorama.com/site-build...iate-redirects

[rucanunes]

Wordpress, sorry!

[Sergej_AGR]

You can try these:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/affiliate-link-cloaking/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/url-cloak-encrypt/

There is also a good plugin called "Ultimate Nofollow" to set links as nofollow.

[DanHorvat]

We covered that one two months ago.

https://www.gpwa.org/forum/better-lo...ks-214339.html

[rucanunes]

We covered that one two months ago.

https://www.gpwa.org/forum/better-lo...ks-214339.html

I don't have access to that post.

[universal4]

This is something we discuss on a regular basis.

You can use a regular html or php redirect and then disallow the folder in which you place the visit pages, or use a plugin if you want it more complicated.

Some affiliates use a method where they redirect the link in the htaccess.

Here are a few of the public discussions. (if I run accross a few more will link them here)
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/does-affi...on-210873.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/redirects...ks-198631.html

Each method has it's pluses and minuses.

Rick
Universal4

[rucanunes]

Is there a away to cloak links generated by this JS?

<!-- Begin ScrollBar -->
<script data-cfasync="false" language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.rewardsaffiliates.com/members/marketingtools/getBanner.aspx?aff_id=103052&color=FFFFF&size=234x 60&currency=eur&width=300&language=en"></script>
<!-- End Scrollbar -->

[universal4]

To my knowledge you can't really cloak that link, but you could serve the banner yourself and cloak the html link.

Rick
Universal4

[CompareGamblingOffer]

Why would you want to hide affiliate links from Google? Is it bad for SEO to have such links to affiliate sites?

[universal4]

Some say that it is.

Rick
Universal4

[sweetbet]

Here's one way to do it:

1. create a new folder on your site. Let's name it /xyz/ for example.
2. On your robots.txt file, disallow all robots from accessing /xyz/ by inserting the following code into your robots.txt file

User-agent: *
Disallow: /xyz/
3. Open a notepad file and insert your affiliate linking code for casino 1. Use the following code:

<?php
header( 'Location: http://www.example.com/affiliatecode' ) ;
?>

4. Save the file as "casino1.php" and upload it into the /xyz/ folder.
5. Then simply link to this file with a nofollow tag.

Now you've told the robots to stay out of your /xyz/ folder and not to follow the link that points to a file contained in your /xyz/ folder.

I hope that helps.

[universal4]

Yep sweetbet and that is the hands down fastest solution there, and if at any time you need to change a link to a casino because they changed something in the back end or you want to redirect that casino elsewhere, you only have to change the link in one place, the xyz folder.

There is also a straight html solution if you don't want php.

The only other thing to also consider in the noindex tags for the engines that do not follow robots.txt and spider the xyz folder anyway.

Rick
Universal4

[Nick.RevenueJet]

Thanks for the useful post, guys.

[justbookies]

I do pretty much as sweetbet has stated (except for step 5 which is a nofollow on an internal link which may not be good & the robots.txt instruction has taken care of that). However there is one very successful affiliate (in terms of google rankings for his chosen and competitive keywords) on this forum whose sites have naked affiliate links. It does not seem to have affected him adversely at all.
When I went to the php redirect method I noticed no improvement for it, though it is certainly handy when updating links.

[DanHorvat]

The theory is that people will click tidy links more than a long ugly affiliate link with strange characters. I don't know does it affect Google, but that's not why I'm cloaking links, I'm doing it for the visitor. And the affiliate link is easy to change from one central location, and all the aff links on the site are healthy, even the ones on the page you created two years ago.

[Sergej_AGR]

Is there a away to cloak links generated by this JS?

Not sure if your example works, but it is possible to hide with javascript.

Hover the outgoing links on http://www.bestcasinoreviewer.com/ and see what your browser shows you, click on it and you will notice that these are affiliate links.

[mickyfu]

I have always used free domains like what you can get from smartdots, and 301 them to my affiliate link.

[universal4]

Unless I misunderstand with the method you are using the problem I see with that method micky, is that your site has a number of external links pointing at free domains.

Rick
Universal4

[mickyfu]

Yes it could be a problem, however, for small niches, I used to keyword the the free domains up, and the websites with keyworded domains seemed to rank a lot better than the websites with plain affiliate links. And I suppose having a free domain, cannot be as bad as a affiliate link. To be honest, I do not bother cloaking in any way at all now, I am quite sure Google does not like cloaking of affiliate links, and having cloaked links would just be one more reason for Google to penalize you site. I just stick to bare minimum affiliate links these days.