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Is this cloaking or just fine?

         

Tob7

11:21 am on Dec 5, 2022 (gmt 0)



Hello,

I got a content website with some nice information and and some income from affiliates. This all works well, but I wonder about one technical issue, some say this is cloaking.

This is the case. For maintenance purpose I don't use the long affiliate links, but something like example.com/go-to/affiliatelink-1/.
These links got:
  • 301 redirect to the affiliate link
  • nofollow
  • blocked in robots.txt

This way I only have to update the affiliate link in the CMS and it keeps working all around the website, instead of having to change a 100 links all the time.

Is there anything wrong with this, could Google have anything against it?

It's not that I'm trying to trick anyone, it is just a maintenance benefit.

jimji

2:37 am on Dec 21, 2022 (gmt 0)



I think the question "... could Google have anything against this?" scares people from trying to answer you. I think if anyone here could answer for Google, they wouldn't do so. They would get in trouble. That thought comes to me as I wonder why two weeks has passed and nobody has answered you.

Personally, to heck with Google. If you put up some sort of notice on your site in plain view explaining what you are doing, your customers/members/guests shouldn't be too upset. But the attitude "to heck with Google" isn't very good for the profit of a site, right? Bad attitude, that is.

To be proper in figuring this out, if Google informs you that you are breaking some sort of terms of service for what you are doing, then they have to (should) explain what in the terms of service is the problem area. Then you could come here and let us know.

Have you made any formal enquiry with the Google folks?

And I sure would hope you would let us know if the Google folks said you were doing something wrong, but wouldn't tell you exactly what the problem is. I would personally go after Google for that and I do have the resources and connections to do that. I can be a very unkind person sometimes and some executives at Google know that only too well. I used to do some work for Google. Even all these years later, some of them don't like me so much.

Please keep us posted. And hope you have a safe and sort of happy holiday season coming up.

jimji

2:45 am on Dec 21, 2022 (gmt 0)



Well, I see one flaw in my thought process above. Google could have an issue with something and instead of informing you directly, you learn through a loss of Google assets assisting your business.

With my use of that vocabulary 'loss of assets assisting your business' I'm trying to cover a whole range of services Google can provide that are sort of hidden away and maybe Google won't disclose the reason for the loss of a given service, no matter what.

Have you noticed anything like that? Or is it too early to know?

lucy24

6:22 pm on Dec 21, 2022 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



blocked in robots.txt
That could be a problem. If a file is disallowed (not “blocked”, because robots.txt is purely informational) then google can't see what happens when you request it. This in turn could rouse suspicion.

AntonioTurner

6:27 am on Jan 28, 2023 (gmt 0)



I don't think so this is the case of cloaking, to me it's seems alright.