Short URL Useful Information

It looks nicer. The masking URL certainly looks a whole lot prettier than the ugly ClickBank link it replaces.

It's shorter. Affiliate links may be so long that they wrap around to take up more than one line on your webpage. This can be disastrous if the link is broken in order that clicking on it only puts the very first line in the browser address bar. That can certainly cause a FILE NOT FOUND error, so your prospective customer gives up in exasperation.

It looks less like an affiliate link. In our example above, the original link is a bit obvious. Some ornery people just can not stand the idea that a person they don't even know is making money from their purchase, even though they don't save any money by not using your link.

It looks less hazardous. Some nervous nellies won't click the link at all because they're concerned about viruses, phishing, porn, etc. Cloaking affiliate links makes the URL look like it is a page on your website, so they feel more reliable in clicking on it.

Google dislikes affiliate links. It's against their "guidelines" for a site to exist for the primary purpose of selling someone else's product. Whenever they get a complaint, or else feel that your web site violates this policy, they can de-index you - to paraphrase, your pages won't be listed in their search engine results!

It's simpler to modify. There can come a time when the product you are promoting is suddenly moved to a different page on the affiliate site. If this happens, your cloaking link needs to be changed in just one place - it's cloaking page. It's masking URL Shortening (click this link here now) need not be changed on every page where it appears on your website.

Link piracy is less likely. This really is perhaps the most critical reason behind masking links. An unscrupulous internet marketer may see your affiliate link, and substitute his own affiliate link for yours. Then he may get the product at a discount - and you lose your commission.