So you are looking for a link cloaking plugin? Or maybe you are wondering why people cloak links?
Did you know that some people say they are looking for a cloaking plugin when they really are simply wanting a link masking plugin.
What's the difference between masking and cloaking? It's simple! Masking changes the URL structure and leverages redirect technologies to send the user elsewhere. Like a shortened link! Goog.gl and Bit.ly and T.co for twitter all employ link masking techniques.
So did you think this was considered cloaking? Well the internet is a place where there are many talking heads and many voices that mimic each other. It's a bird sanctuary! To many people Cloaking and Masking are the same thing and they educate people to believe the same, but for others cloaking involves a little more than simply masking the URL structure. Cloaking becomes a practice where the true redirect location is dynamic, and spiders or certain humans are shown one location while other visitors are shown another.
You may be wondering why in the world people would do that, and believe that there is nothing good that could come from such a technique, I thought this too until I was approached by people who wanted to protect their destination from both search engines and from people they are selling for. The world is an imperfect place where justice and good hearted nature are often circumvented by injustice and selfish sentiment. Developers with good intention have been burned by their employer stealing their marketing ideas and dropping them and sometimes not even paying them. And other times developers have to worry about the heartless algorithms of search engines not being favorable to their site if their site is an affiliate-sales effort.
There are more reasons. Often times a reason for cloaking is very unique to circumstance. That's why WP Traffic Tools, an awesomely powerful and variable traffic management plugin, provides a link cloaking module within their link masking module!
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