Thread: Url masking in SEO

what is Url masking and how it is useful in SEO.

Domain Masking or URL Masking is the art of hiding the actual domain name of a website from the URL field of a user's web browser in favor of another name.
Source : Wikipedia

URL Masking means that the visitors to the domain name will be forwarded to your destination website, however the URL in their browser address bar will remain the same. Also known as Stealth Redirection or URL Hiding, this will ensure that your visitors see the orignal domain name and not the destination URL.

As per my knowledge URL masking is type of covering up a URL with a different one, it encapsulate actual URL with domain name.

Its nothing but hiding the website but showing the same URL what you are expecting and showing the different website without your knowledge. To say simply, it shows the destination website but the original URL in the browser. Its mostly used for 2 purposes as following.

1. Masking affiliate URLs and helps in tracking the sales and conversions.
2. Helps to hide the long domain name, and track the clicks.

URL Masking means that the visitors to the domain name will be forwarded to your destination website, however the URL in their browser address bar will remain the same.

URL Masking is the methode of hiding the actual domain name of a website from the URL field of a user's web browser in favor of another name.

If you use affiliate marketing you can hide your affiliate URL. It is good for SEO because Google does not recognize that it is an affiliate link. And good for marketing because increase the trust in the visitor if the link masked with your own domain.

URL Masking means that the visitors to the domain name will be forwarded to your destination website, however the URL in their browser address bar will remain the same. Also known as Stealth Redirection or URL Hiding, this will ensure that your visitors see the orignal domain name and not the destination URL.

I am not sure if this technique in called black hat seo? but if you like then you can use dot co dot cc for URL masking, I used this service 4 years back

Thanks for this information.

When 'masking' your aff link it makes it easier for a person to type it into the address bar. For example, most clickbank links are long and hard to remember off the top of your head. But if you mask or redirect a domain name to your aff link it is good. So change the clickbank aff link to something like bit.ly/easyweightloss will be remembered easier.

URL masking is cloaking url. It is used to hide your original url from visitors. Sometime it is useful to promote affiliate products.

URL masking is very much useful when you are shortening your affiliate URL or wanting to keep track of the number of clicks on particular URL.

OK, the answers explain what URL masking is. But now there is a follow-up question:

Is URL masking good or bad? That is, does Google like it or does Google penalize URL masking?

I know that many people cloak their affiliate links. Google doesn't like affiliate links, especially if the web page has a lot of them. That's called a 'link farm,' I think. Google doesn't like that, so people try to cloak their links. But -- according to one of the Warrior Forum lawyers -- Google can see through cloaking, so according to this guy cloaking doesn't help. Does Google treat URL masking as if it is cloaking? Or does URL masking pass Google's inspection?