I don’t think I’m going to be sparking any major revelations for you when I say that Google might not be the biggest fan of affiliate marketing. I mean, sure, they make a lot of money off of affiliates who do PPC, but that rarely stops them from harassing the heck out of affiliates. It seems when your site gets tagged as affiliate by the big GOOG, your chances of success go down drastically. Luckily, there are some tactics to help you fight back - and one of the most straightforward is hiding your affiliate links.

Yes, it might be a bit underhanded, but as Everett Sizemore points out, hiding your affiliate links not only protects you from undue scrutiny from the search engines but also can help increase your conversion and protect you from parasites trying to steal your affiliate commissions.

Sounds fair enough, eh?

To find out how to hide those affiliate links, first read Everett’s post “Hiding Your Affiliate Links from Spiders, Visitors and Parasites.” If you’re looking for instructions on how to hide those links using PHP, head over to the Stuge post on the topic. You can also check out the PHP jump script from SteveDawson.com.

One thing though, I know Everett’s post brings up JavaScript redirects, but from doing a little searching it sounds like Google is doing a pretty good job detecting these and penalizing sites for using them (and potentially the advertiser as well…ouch). I know that the penalty is meant for people who are cloaking web pages, but it seems a bit foolish to get nailed for something like this. I guess what I’m saying is stick to the PHP solutions listed above.