Affiliate link cloaking?

[Lujastyles]

Hello!

I am wondering what are the guidelines for cloaking a Zazzle affiliate link? Should we? Can we?

thank you :0

[waterart]

You can use redirection but you are not allowed to cloak zazzle's url. For example if the url remains cloaked after zazzle's page loads, that is not allowed. If the cloaked url reverts to zazzle's url once the page loads, that's fine. But I wouldn't do it anyway.

[idraw]

I personally would not.
A couple of other things to consider:
Why is cloaking not recommended by Google?
Cloaking is considered a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines because it provides human visitors with different results. A website must provide content to search engine spiders or bots (the google search crawler), in order to improve its search engine rankings for specific keywords.
Oct 27, 2021 Is cloaking good for SEO?
Should cloaking be done in SEO?
In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry, cloaking is considered to be a black hat technique that violates Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you ask us whether you should do cloaking to trick crawlers and rank high, our answer will be NO, search engines don't like to be tricked.

[igiftcenter]

Bad idea for all the reasons stated in the replies. Why not just use a link shortener? Google had one but when it shut that service down it recommended user use other alternative link shorteners. At least with a link shortener you can turn those really long links into something less intimidating looking to your audience.  

[PAZP]

Just an FYI. 

If you are in the Promoter Program 2, toward the bottom of Page 2 under "What is a Promoter Link?, it tells us not to use a shortened link. 

Promoter Program 2 

[Lujastyles]

thank you. That makes sense. I remember reading a link shortener would mess up Zazzle analytics, but it that only with a Promoter link?

[PAZP]

I don't know about a shortener messing up analytics but before joining the PP2, I used shorteners. A mod would probably have to answer that question.

If I recall correctly, Zazzle used shorteners at one point when we shared from a page link share icon. 

[Lujastyles]

I was referring yes to using a link shortener... still don't understand the difference between "link cloaking" or "link shorting"... was wondering if Zazzle permits link shorteners.

[waterart]

Cloaking is when the real web address continues to be hidden in the browser address bar after the customer arrives at the page. That is not allowed. A link shortener doesn't hide the real address, so when a customer arrives at the web page through a link shortener the real web address is displayed in the browser's address bar

[CrazyMermaid]

Affiliates cloak their links because a large number of affiliate links on a single page hurt that page's ranking in Google. It can also hurt the entire website and get it ranked as a thin affiliate site or spam. Merchants don't allow affiliates to cloak links because they want the Google boost from the large number of affiliate links. Some affiliate programs throw you out, if your site ranks higher than theirs. Cloaking is definitely not for beginners.

[waterart]

Merchants don't want links cloaked because it messes up the checkout  preventing customers from going through with the purchase, and cloaking can also hide where the purchase is really coming from. Cloaked links are basically frames, the destination site ends up in frames so no matter where the person goes after they clicked on a cloaked link the url in the browser bar remains the cloaked link's url. This is not the same as a redirection link which does not hide the real web address in the browser bar.