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Link Cloaking

Link cloaking replaces the raw affiliate URL in your injected links with a clean redirect URL on AffRank’s servers. Instead of visitors seeing a long, messy affiliate tracking URL, they see something like https://api.affrank.ai/go/best-web-hosting.

  • Cleaner appearance — short URLs look more trustworthy in status bars and on hover
  • Easier management — if an affiliate program changes your tracking URL, update it once in AffRank and all pages update automatically
  • Click consistency — all clicks route through AffRank before the final destination, ensuring tracking is captured regardless of the page
  1. Go to Affiliate Links in your dashboard
  2. Click Edit on any link
  3. Toggle Link Cloaking to enabled
  4. Click Save

When cloaking is enabled, the injected link on your site will use https://api.affrank.ai/go/YOUR-KEYWORD instead of your raw affiliate URL. Visitors are redirected to the affiliate destination immediately — the redirect is instant and transparent.

How the redirect works

AffRank uses a 302 redirect (temporary). This is intentional for affiliate links:

  • 302 does not pass PageRank, which is correct for affiliate links
  • The affiliate network’s tracking still fires correctly
  • Clicks are still recorded in AffRank analytics before the redirect

Cloaking and Google compliance

Link cloaking does not remove rel="sponsored". AffRank adds that attribute regardless of whether cloaking is enabled. Google’s affiliate link policies require rel="sponsored" — it’s always present.

When not to use cloaking

Some affiliate networks prohibit link cloaking in their terms. Always check your affiliate agreement. If cloaking is not allowed, leave it disabled for that link — AffRank injects the raw affiliate URL directly instead.