Is hiding your affiliate referal important for conversions?

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I've got a question for some veterans. Do you really have to hide your affiliate referal code in your link or banners? Should I design some redirect that embedds them? Is it really that important in conversions that someone sees.. Casinourl.com?affiliate=affiliatecode ??

[matted]

I used to do that, but it just became too difficult to put it on every link.... I've gone completely away from it.

My concern is what people can do with the link cloaking bit... SEs have to be scared of putting fraud sites at the top of the rankings. At least that is my opinion.

[VPJunkie]

I've never hidden my aff codes, in 6+ yrs of biz. The vast majority of visitors are unaware of what aff codes are, or don't care. The ones who are going to cheat us are going to do it no matter what, so why bother?

[magicdane]

Like Matted I used to hide my aff link, when I started out 7 years ago, but haven´t done it the last years.

I don´t actually think it helps conversions hiding the link, but as with many other things it´s like religion - a matter of faith.

[Ziggy]

I used to also mask the aff url but it did become a pain as Matt pointed out. And as Sly said if there going to cheat you they will find a way.

I think, to the player looking for good gaming, they don't care...as long as they get there.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

Thank you for the input guys..
Common sense told me your right.. but then again common sense told me to sell google at $190 a share.. I was wrong! lol

I can see how a few potential clients would try to avaoid giving you the refferal, but hopefully the vast majority won't care like you said. I'll spend myu time improving other areas instead of hiding urls..

You did bring up a good point about penalties for cloaking.. I didn't think about that possible reprecusion.

Thank you all!

[kidd75219]

Her's another thing to think about. Some players would rather sign up at casinos through affiliate links. Especially if it is from a site that gets involved and helps players when they have a problemwith a casino.

[Ace Fun]

Anti-fraud advice for reading emails and clicking links is that you should avoid clicking when the target URL is concealed. I've even seen it suggested that you should disable j/script to make checking easier.

Somehow webmasters seem to think that because it's their own site, then this advice isn't applicable.

[allmicro]

Why not just block so people cant veiw the source?