The Link cloaking dilema that may catch you

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The link cloaker is when you change your link so that readers can't jump your affiliate links or the link is very long and you want to track who clicks on what link.

This has been around for a long time and Google has one as well Bitty, plus a whole host of plug ins.

I thought this a good idea for several reasons;

1) I could track a link and even the a/b test

2) If I wanted to change the link I only did it once and all pages would change

3) the links to by posts were short and one word to look professional

4) no broken links to spoil by SEO

I put in a beautiful plug in (name changed) to do this and was Pretty happy. The plugin is in the training at WA

My problem was that the traffic count on Google analytics was going down but I knew it was there.
I sent a few emails and can see the click rate but it was not reporting

I Googled the problem and did everything they said but to no avail.

I kept searching and finally found the answer.

You and I both hate wasting a day like this chasing something really easy like logging into the Link Cloaker and tick the allow analytic box. How easy is that?

But no!

Only P..Link Pro has that ability so pay your money or put up with it.


This is where the difficulty lies.

If I delete the Plug in I have to go back through 50 odd posts and change all the links

and probably leave a smattering of broken links on the site

So I am forced into going to Pro OK its only us$50 a year no big deal you say, but it is.

I was running this as a trial to see how good this could be and would back out now if I had a choice.

My point is, understand what you are doing before going full ahead with any plug in or service.

At the same time my Yoast service would not work on one of by sights so again I went searching for a culprit.
Interestingly, the pro version on my the main site worked

I have downloaded a popup plug in and this blocked yoast, just another 3 covid hours wasted.

Sometimes this business can be so frustrating.

Peter H

PS When I went pro I set up the report file and it looks pretty good so all is not lost and my Google analytics results bounced right up again so the issue by just be frustrating



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Recent Comments

6

Thanks for sharing this!

Jeff

Thanks for sharing, has this happened to anyone else that you know of

No, and it was not until I noticed my traffic falling when it should have been rising that I became aware.

Hopefully, the pro version is worth it.
PH

Hi Peter, this is really useful and helpful information, many thanks, Sue 😊

But, but, but... All your Pretty Links are unique. So why not just use prettier permalinks? And keep the Pretty Link plugin for making ugly affiliate links look pretty.

Oh, but I shall say He going forward

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