Hiding Affiliate links ?

[s2kinteg916]

Do u guys think its a good idea to hide a affiliate link ? with a links script or it doesnt matter..

[Xander]

Apparently Norton internet security can block/remove links it doesn't think is about the actual site, it includes affiliate/some external links. So its probably worth it.

[s2kinteg916]

a links php script could help prevent this... interesting...

[Percept]

a links php script could help prevent this... interesting...

it wouldn't be hiding the link would it ? It wouldn't be a direct link to the affiliate but the PR would still "flow away" to your redirect page right ?

[s2kinteg916]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/scripts/out.php?LinkID=90

Pr wouldnt flow becuz its a dynamic link...like example above

Also xander makes a great point that norton wouldnt be able to block it... i dont see how they would even know its a affiliate link

[s2kinteg916]

Im thinking of purchasing this script looks like it has alot of features for 18.95

http://web-script.com/mylinks/

[chromate]

The link example you gave on this site runs through a script in a directory which is banned by robots.txt file, so googlebot wont follow it. Google does however sometimes follow dynamic links.

[s2kinteg916]

so u would put the robots.txt file in domain/script/

[ozgression]

Anyone care to share the php code like Chris uses on this site (for linkouts)?
________
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[s2kinteg916]

heres a free solution

http://php.warpedweb.net/clicklog/

[ozgression]

Nice one.

Cheers...
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buy iolite (http://www.vaporshop.com/iolite-vaporizer.html)

[alien]

If you prefer something simple, create a PHP script, out.php:



<?php
$id = base64_decode(urldecode($_GET['id']));
header("Location: $id");
?>


So, when you want to hide the affiliate link:

<a href="http://www.MyDomain.com/out.php?id=<?php echo base64_encode('http://www.MyAffiliateLink.com/aff.php?3232'); ?>">Hidden Affiliate Link</a>

[s2kinteg916]

This is a pretty cool idea as well to hide affiliate links just in case your links are dynamic and change alot

<a href="http://www.website.com/affiliatelink/id101...." onmouseover="window.status='http://www.amazon.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status=' ';return true;">Amazon.com</a>

When the mouse is over the link it shows http://www.amazon.com rather than the long affiliate refferal link

[Xander]

The window.status is only what shows in the bar on the bottom but its not actually hiding the url. The best way is to use javascript or a php script like shown.

[doolally]

I use the following

mysql_query("UPDATE links SET l_followed_txt=(followed_txt+1) WHERE l_id='$id'");
$query = "SELECT l_url FROM lin WHERE l_id='$id'";
$row = mysql_query($query);
$url = mysql_fetch_array($row,MYSQL_ASSOC);
$url_link = $url['l_url'];
header("location: $l_link");

You'll notice that it also counts how many times the link has been clicked. So I can list the links by popularaty. If I add images to the site I'll do the same using l_followed_img. just a simple way of gathering infomation as to what people may prefer to click