Referrer URL hiding (double meta refresh?) & URL Get request hiding (8)

Hi All,

Many thanks in advance if you can assist, tracking is not my strong point though am doing my best to learn. I have tried the search function but can't quite find the answer to this.

So I have mywebsite.com and I send traffic to company.com.

To send traffic, I use their affiliate link which the normal ?affID=xxx (amongst other details).

However, I do not wish company.com to know where I am sending traffic from. I do have a genuine reason (at least I hope so!) in that company.com also own an affiliate business and I expect they would look to copy the way I am sending traffic, thus adding more competition for my website!

What I am looking to do is:

1. Prevent company.com from seeing the referrer url - from what I understand I need to implement a double meta refresh?

2. However, company.com could still visit mywebsite.com and see the link I am using (and therefore see my affiliate ID and they would then see it is going well so could then copy my website). Therefore, I believe I need to prevent company.com from seeing the affID I am using also in the link use on my website. From what I understand this is hiding the GET request part of the url. Is there a way to do this also? (from searching I see some suggestions about using POST instead?)

Btw if it makes any impact I am happy for the company.com to load in a separate tab (this is likely preferable).

Many thanks if you could help!

chris

Bump!

I ended out using ClickMeter.com as they provide referral masking/cloaking referrer url. This company.com won't see in their google analytics that I am sending traffic from mywebsite.com.

However, I still have the issue of query string masking/cloaking.

i.e. on mywebsite.com, I have affiliate link for company.com/?affID=xxx

Instead, I want this to show as company.com without the query still. Help much appreciated on this! I appreciate someone could still use 'Inspect Element' to dig into the cookies but I'd just like to ensure this information isn't easily viewable by showing the link as company.com/?affID=xxx

ClickMeter support said their tool(s) couldn't help but I have seen this in numerous affiliate sites.

Many thanks if you can help!

chris

Basic client-side:

<a href="http://www.google.com" onclick="this.href='http://www.stuff.co.nz'; this.onclick = null;">Link</a>

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://yoururl.here/?affid=12345");
?>

Suppose you want to hide your mywebsite.com site from the company.com

Most affiliate network trackers are still HTTP so you sent traffic from mywebsite.com to http://company.com?affid=evildude.

Just make mywebsite.com HTTPS (https://mywebsite.com) by buying $9 SSL certificate off namecheap.com and referral info won't go through plus you'll have a plausible deniablity as you didn't formally "hide" it but rather enables SSL on a website which is normal practice nowadays and even encouraged for SEO.

Originally Posted by stitch

Basic client-side:

HTML Code:

<a href="http://www.google.com" onclick="this.href='http://www.stuff.co.nz'; this.onclick = null;">Link</a>

When you hover over the link it shows google.com, link redirects to stuff.co.nz (swap out for your aff link).
It won't stop people someone who's looking through the code from figuring it out... but very few things will client-side. Also won't cover users with javascript turned off.


Basic server-side:

Create a new PHP page on your site, i.e outlink.php, containing the following:

Code:

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://yoururl.here/?affid=12345");
?>

And link to http://mysite.com/outlink.php

Originally Posted by egorpe

Suppose you want to hide your mywebsite.com site from the company.com

Most affiliate network trackers are still HTTP so you sent traffic from mywebsite.com to http://company.com?affid=evildude.

Just make mywebsite.com HTTPS (https://mywebsite.com) by buying $9 SSL certificate off namecheap.com and referral info won't go through plus you'll have a plausible deniablity as you didn't formally "hide" it but rather enables SSL on a website which is normal practice nowadays and even encouraged for SEO.

Ah, I misunderstood. Sorry.

Other than iFraming, which the advertiser probably won't like and is pretty easy for them to spot anyway, I'm not aware of a way to achieve that if they don't redirect affiliate id query strings themselves (even then, they're the ones who redirected it and will be able to trace). To the best of my knowledge, once the user leaves your web server there's nothing else you can change.

Originally Posted by stitch

Ah, I misunderstood. Sorry.

Other than iFraming, which the advertiser probably won't like, I'm not aware of a way to achieve that if the they don't redirect affiliate id query strings themselves. To the best of my knowledge, once the user leaves your web server there's nothing else you can change. I'm definitely ready to be proved wrong though!