That takes me to http://pintotours.net/Pinto/out/OcciStoDom.html, which is a totally blank page…
Now, taht’s interesting, because when I click on the Occidental the url shows http://pintotours.net/Pinto/out/OcciStoDom.html but the Occidental apge opens.
I wonder why it does not on your side, Could you try it again, please?
OK - I’ve realised it’s because I’m using Ghostery to block trackers. If I pause that, it takes me to a page which says in the URL that it’s your site, but which clearly isn’t. Hovering over any link on that page shows me they belong to occidentalhotels.com, even though the URL in the address bar still shows your site - and doesn’t change, no matter which link I click.
Personally, I would find it extremely worrying if a site I visited behaved that way. I’d leave, never to return.
Well, somthing to think about. But all the url says is that it belongs to the site you have been looking at. Basides, you are taken to a well know hotel site, and noone is asking you for money!
But, I will think deeply about your and Mittineage reservations.
I guess, this is the end of the road and none ion the forum will help me sort this porblem out. I may well decide to use the other sustem, which is in oepration in other pages: the link is still redirected internally but the url is the real one.
Returning to the beginning I would probably trust a url that show me I am still in the site I visited, than one that is supposed to link me say to Hilton, but show a long url with mentions of TradeTracker, followed by Affilred, before it eventually opens the desired page. I usually close the page when that happens and tákes more than 2 or 3 seconds. Feeling that you are still with the site you trusted to start with, to my mid, is more raessuring. Besides, you are not fooling anyone; simply hoping that if they copy the url to look at the hotel again, they will do it in my site and do not go directly to the hotel.
But that’s the problem. The URL says I’m still on the site I started on, but it looks quite different - which is the first thing to make me think I’m not - and Firefox’s preview bar shows that links go to a different site:
Even worse, if I click that link, it will load new content, but the URL will not change; it will still show me that I’m apparently on your site. This is not how I expect links to work.
[quote=“qim, post:24, topic:112487”]
none ion the forum will help me sort this porblem out.
[/quote]It’s not that I won’t help. Frankly, I don’t know how to do what you want, and I’m just pointing out the pitfalls of trying to conceal things from your visitors.
But I would not be conceiling anything. I invited them to click on a link to take them to a hotel’s site and that is where they arrive. I will have to think carefully about the points you made, but I cannot see why the url remaing that of the site they visited would constitute a problem, and I doubt if there are many people who would notice. If they go ahead and book that’s between them and the hotel. if they copy the link to return later, the site owner’s positionis protected, as it should be.
After all, if somebosy id thinking of going abroad and needs a hotel they will most probably not book it while riding the Underground, If they see something inteersting they will bookmark it and wait until they can measure one against the other. Why should sites go to the trouble of publishing adverts if the visitor takes the link (the hotel’s and books directly?
I was a Travel Agent most of my life. I would not like to people to come and waste my time getting information, for then going and booking everything directly, even when it did not cost them less (but I helped, just the same…)
You said above that if you came across a site like mine, you would never return. But,you probably would not return anyway, beacuse it would be the hotel’s name and not my site that remained in your mind!
I am using th system already but it means creating an individual html file for each link. The other system puts every link into a single file, whic is much better but shows the tru url.
I cannot see anything illegal, immoral, or unethical about it.
Anyway, food for thought.
It doesn’t matter so much what you think. It’s what visitors think.
And don’t be so sure most won’t notice. Many browsers have “Alert this site is _____” type messages that will bring it directly to their attention.
Not to mention that if / when Google stumbles upon it, it might be considered as “cloaking” which could have dire effects if you hope to have the site show up in the SERPs
Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected.
Now, I sat up and listened,… although it does not provide users with different results than they expected. they expecte dto go to a certain site and they got there!
But what’s with cloaking? Forgetting about the url is redirecting the affiliate link via an internal redirect considered "bad"cloaking. Is there “good” cloaking? because at the ned of the day I amtrying to hide the link for more reasons than the ones mentioned above. I understand that there is some link (affiliate code) hijacking or njection too.
UPDATE
Is there a Google contact to clarify these things?
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