Covertlinks - Link Cloaker and URL Redirector Review

Affiliate Link Cloaking, Encrypting and Redirecting is NOT that easy as it seems since there are many pitfalls and things to consider.

CovertLinks by Perry Wolf is probably the best utility in that area.

Recently i blogged a bit about various ways to cloak/hide and encrypt affiliate links.

You can also read some input of mine on Digital Point Forum where i wrote about various ways of cloaking and redirecting links.

In case you wonder what this is all about: You cloak and hide affiliate links for various reasons and with various goals in mind:

Making a link look more attractive without it displaying ugly affiliate-IDs
Making a site overall look more atractive, less spammy looking and (possibly) get higher rankings in search engines
Most importantly: Making sure that even if you cloak and redirect you do not lose commissions. (More about that later)
To clone sites where you are promoting products so the 3rd party site appears as it would be a site of yours, hosted by your server, on your own URL.
If you ever promoted a dozen or more products you can see the advantage:

Instead of really copying, rewriting and hosting dozens of your own "copy" sales-pitch sites for various clickbank/amazon/commisionjunction etc. products you just make those sites appear as yours...without any real design work involved.
To have your own "semi fake" landing page available for PPC (AdWords) in case there is already a competiting URL with the same display- and destination URL. In this case you just clone a site using a cloaker and the site will be available under your own URL - and you can therefore put up the ad on AdWords.
There are various techniques of cloaking, and without going into detail i just list them here short:

Cloaking using a simple PHP Header redirect
Cloaking using .htaccess
Cloaking using HTML, eg. using frames

Those techniqes all involve either loading a site to clone into a frame, making it appear as it would be under your URL....or using techniques like Meta Refresh redirects or similiar.

I was experimenting with a lot of scripts and techniques the last few days, i also tried out a variety of commercial available URL redirectors and cloakers.

There is a problem:

Most (if not all!) of those techniques have one or more serious downfalls - they're unreliable when it comes to setting the cookies which are important to make sure that an affiliate really gets the commission after he redirected to a a site.

There are mechanisms involved which cause problems for certain bowsers and methods. It can happen that you use some commercial tool to create your affiliate links - but in reality it's a pure matter of luck to actually get the commission since their methods only work with certain browsers, or use outdated methods.

Another factor i had an eye on: The cloaker software/script should have the ability to specify a title, description and keywords for the new cloaked site so it look more attractive to the search-engines. Just a plain redirect would not be enough!

The majority of all tools and scripts out there just put the javascript encoded cloak in the page...but don't bother with additional features like page title, description and keywords.

You can imagine that a redirect link/page which only consists of a header-redirect to a 3rd party side does not look very attractive to the search engines - neither would this be good for good quality score on adwords in case you point to a page with a cloaked link like this.

After i tested at least half a dozen programs and scripts i came along some interesting postings on warrior forum - postings of a guy who definitly knew what he was talking about in regards to link cloaking and redirects, and he also mentioned that he offered his very own link cloaker software called CovertLinks.

If you think i am just "promoting" any random product to make commission in case someone would buy via one of my reviews: You are certainly wrong.

It was immediately clear that the person on warrior forum knew a lot about the subject, and the sales page looked very convincing also. So i got me his tool CovertLinks, and i can without a doubt say that this link-cloaker is hands down the best available at this point.

CovertLinks comes with one version for creating HTML cloaks, one version for advanced PHP cloaks, an additional javascript for protection from parasites and some short instructions.

Why is CovertLinks better than any other link redirection and cloaking software i have ever seen ?

CovertLinks uses advanced techniques for pulling and displaying the 3rd party site using frames (for the HTML version) - but in a way which asures that the commission cookies are set by any browser, be it IE or Firefox. All other tools do NOT do this and it can happen that you lose commissions using any of the other link cloakers, despending on what browser is used by the potential customers.

The "advanced" PHP version goes even a step further and does exactly what i actually wanted to program myself: It pulls a true 1:1 copy of a site and re-generates (copies) the site on your own host - thus creating real content.
In other words: Instead of just having a plain redirect and a fake "ghost" site it does grab the content of the site you redirect - it truly clones any affiliate page!

The HTML version also allows entering your own page title, description and keywords.

There is a javascript code included which can be installed also to get additional protection from parasites and commission stealers and similiar.

Usage is just straight forward, you enter your destination URL, affiliate URL etc., click the button and copy the encrypted link code in an html file and upload it to your server.

I haven't played around too much with the PHP version yet, also i didnt try the additional technique using the included javascript code - but i can defintly say that this is the king of all link cloakers out there, after i spent some days researching the subject and after my own experiments and research.

The price is a very reasonable $29,97 and i personally think this is very little money WELL spent.

If you want intelligent and maximum protection for your affiliate links, if you want to make sure that you really get paid if people click on your links and NOT lose commissions due to problems with certain browsers not setting cookies, if you want advanced cloaking and even a true way to clone and copy other sites 1:1:

You need to get this tool since it is the best advanced link cloaker and redirector around, an extremely valuable tool for anyone doing affiliate marketing.

You can get CovertLinks here. Be aware that there are similiar products out there, one even with a very similar name. Don't buy those since most/all of them use oldfashioned methods of cloaking using frames and chances are you will lose commissions since those methods are unreliable!

Note also: I am quite aware there are many free scripts and methods out there, some only using a line or two to realize a simple header redirect via PHP. The advantage of an advanced cloak-page containing a title, description and keywords should be obvious, and i dont need to mention about what advantage in regards to SEO a true 1:1 site copy would have as opposed to a page which merely consists of a header redirect. That's why i prefer CovertLinks over a simple PHP script any time.

Georg.