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Hi Goldfinger
I use the FireFox browser and love it. I have noticed that many webmasters do not optimize their sites for the FireFox browser. The formating FF does not look the same as in IE.
Instead of using encrypted links have you thought about using direct links? Some affiliate programs offer them.
Goldfinger wrote:However the neat little Javascript method doesn´t work in Firefox at all and I´m not sure wether a blank status bar is more trust inspiring?Javascript only doesn’t work if the user has it disabled in their browser. I use firefox and it works fine. I don’t think its disabled by default. Go to tools > options > content and make sure Enable Javascript is checked. If it is checked and javascript still isn’t working the clear your cache. Firefox likes to load cached pages.
Also have you considered a click tracking script? Your links wouldn’t look like direct links but I don’t think users would consider them dodgy. For example your links could look like http://example.com/click.php?12345
I used javascript for years to mask the ugly click-tracking URLs, showing the user a clean http://www.somewhere.com domain in the status bar instead. However, a few months back, I stripped out all that onmouseover and onmouseout code.
The reason?Firefox users don’t see it anyway, and more importantly, neither will IE7 users. The default in IE7 is to disable script access to the status bar. I’m sure there were plenty of devious sites abusing this concept, so we have them to blame for its demise.
I think cloaking links in this way is pointless these days, and will become more and more so.
I would say rather than trying to cloak links, use a redirector script, as mentioned earlier. Tracking is nice, but a basic redirect looks like this
create clicked.php, it will expect to be called: clicked.php?ID=2 (the id being the affiliate link you wish to redirect to.) This has the added benefit of giving you 1 location/file with all your links, when the program sends the email “Change all your links”.
I’ve put in 2 cases and a default, you can put as many “case”s as you want (at least 255, probably 64k)
$ID = intval($_GET[“ID”]);
switch($ID)
{
case 1: // Code for Location or deal A
$url = “http://www.partypoker.com/index20100_np.htm?wm=2000671”;
break;case 2: // Code for Location/Deal b
$url = “http://www.partypoker.com/index20100_np.htm?wm=2000672”;
break;default: // In case you screw up, send them somewhere
$url = “http://www.playunited.com/AidDownload.php?casinoID=64&gAID=250&subGid=0&bannerID=856”;
break;
}
header(“Location: $url”) ;
?>Thanks for the script AmCan. Certainly helps with the shitty “change all your links, please” letters.
@ BlackjackInfo
I will not bother with the javascript as the status bar is empty in Firefox as it is and if this feature will be deprecated it´s even more pointless to go through the hassle of putting all the code into the links.
I used this method when I first started out, but ditched it for two reasons. One, I felt that were Google or Yahoo, or anyone for that matter, to cast an eye over my sites for manual approval, that might leave them with a bad taste. Better to be totally upfront. Secondly, I think players who find a site useful won’t generally mind affiliate links. Some people may bypass them of course, but I’ve not seen any drop in the % of clicks to views since changing it.
As a player, or even as a shopper, I prefer sites to be “open” about how things work. I don’t like feeling like I am being duped and am more likely to bypass a link or Google the casino/product if I think I am.
As a player, or even as a shopper, I prefer sites to be “open” about how things work. I don’t like feeling like I am being duped and am more likely to bypass a link or Google the casino/product if I think I am
That is understandable. I am the same way but when I see click.php I know its because the website owner is tracking clicks. I wrote a click.php script but its database driven. This way I can store useful information to see which links are performing the best.
I also used javascript to hide links, but now I’m going to hide them at all and show then using a php script. You know id of casino in your database and php script finds the url and opens this site.
using a php script is probably the best solution.
How about a .htaccess redirect?
Add a line like
Redirect /links/Some-Casino xhttp://adserver.somecasino/?member=MySillyUsername
to your .htaccess and then use the link xhttp://mysite.com/links/some-casino to send your traffic to that casino. If you are nervous about google, just add /links as restricted directory into your robots.txt and you’re good to go.This has three advantages I like:
1) Sometimes the affiliate programs’ links don’t even have the casino’s names in them, which makes the links seem kinda suspicious to some.
2) Super simple solution to the problem, yet it works perfectly with every browser.
and most importantly
3) Links are quick & easy to update. All the links are in a single text file, so if for any reason you need to change the url for Some-Casino’s traffic you only need to update that one line in .htaccess.Astronaut wrote:How about a .htaccess redirect?Add a line like
Redirect /links/Some-Casino xhttp://adserver.somecasino/?member=MySillyUsername
to your .htaccess and then use the link xhttp://mysite.com/links/some-casino to send your traffic to that casino. If you are nervous about google, just add /links as restricted directory into your robots.txt and you’re good to go.This has three advantages I like:
1) Sometimes the affiliate programs’ links don’t even have the casino’s names in them, which makes the links seem kinda suspicious to some.
2) Super simple solution to the problem, yet it works perfectly with every browser.
and most importantly
3) Links are quick & easy to update. All the links are in a single text file, so if for any reason you need to change the url for Some-Casino’s traffic you only need to update that one line in .htaccess.Now that is a very interesting idea. :rasta:
Astronaut wrote:If you are nervous about google, just add /links as restricted directory into your robots.txt and you’re good to go.I am a little confused about the robots.txt file and blocking an entire directory and everything under it. Lets say I have a folder named links, and each page to the casino would be named something like /links/casino1.html , links/casino2.html ect… Where I get confused is if I want to block all of these pages, do I block it like
/links or /links/
I have checked a few of the more prominent gambling portals and I see that people do it differently. I thought if you used /links/ it would block everything in that directory and under it, but I think I might be wrong. Anyone know for sure the right way to do it?
Astronaut wrote:How about a .htaccess redirect?Add a line like
Redirect /links/Some-Casino xhttp://adserver.somecasino/?member=MySillyUsername
to your .htaccess and then use the link xhttp://mysite.com/links/some-casino to send your traffic to that casino. If you are nervous about google, just add /links as restricted directory into your robots.txt and you’re good to go.This has three advantages I like:
1) Sometimes the affiliate programs’ links don’t even have the casino’s names in them, which makes the links seem kinda suspicious to some.
2) Super simple solution to the problem, yet it works perfectly with every browser.
and most importantly
3) Links are quick & easy to update. All the links are in a single text file, so if for any reason you need to change the url for Some-Casino’s traffic you only need to update that one line in .htaccess.Looking again at this today. One thing you have to be careful about is the potential for duplicate content. If you use simple directory/page structures to call a redirect script within .htaccess, then it is possible you could be seen to be hosting versions of the casinos homepages by the SE spiders. So definately use robots.txt exclusions and nofollow directives.
As tempting as the .htaccess idea may seem when you have a hosting support nut turn it off without warning (see my rant in the free for all section) you´re screwed let alone all the other stuff that´s dependant on the .htaccess
