How to Cloak and Track Affiliate Links in 2026 (Free & Paid Tools)
Why raw affiliate URLs hurt your clicks, how Google actually wants them tagged, and the free plugins that fix both problems in one step.
This post mentions specific WordPress plugins for research purposes. No affiliate links to those plugins are included — see our full affiliate disclosure for how we handle product links on this site.
rel="sponsored" attribute, which both plugins add automatically when you cloak a link through them.
Why bother cloaking affiliate links at all?
If you’ve been pasting raw WarriorPlus, JVZoo, ClickBank or Digistore24 links straight into your posts, you already know the problem: those URLs are long, full of tracking parameters, and look exactly like what they are — a reason for a reader to hesitate before clicking. A cloaked link such as smartreviewexpert.com/go/toolname reads as a normal part of your site instead.
That’s the cosmetic reason. The practical reason is bigger: once a link is cloaked through a plugin, the destination lives in one place. If a vendor changes their sales page, discontinues an offer, or you simply get a better affiliate link later, you update it once in the plugin and every post that uses that short link updates automatically — instead of you hunting through old articles trying to remember where you pasted the old URL.
The third reason is the one most beginner guides skip entirely, and it’s about search rankings, not readers.
The part most guides skip: Google’s rel=”sponsored” rule
Google’s own guidance on qualifying outbound links is direct about affiliate links specifically: a paid or commercial link — and an ordinary affiliate link counts — should carry rel="sponsored" (or at minimum rel="nofollow") on the anchor tag. Google has said this isn’t a punishment for having affiliate links; it’s simply asking sites to be honest about which outbound links are commercial. Since March 1, 2020, Google treats these attributes as hints rather than binding directives, but leaving commercial links completely unmarked is explicitly called out under Google’s link spam policies, and sites that ignore it risk ranking lower.
This is exactly where a link-cloaking plugin earns its keep without you having to think about it: both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates let you set links to add rel="sponsored nofollow" automatically, so every cloaked link on your site is tagged correctly by default instead of you remembering to add the attribute by hand in every post.
Free tools you can start with today
You don’t need to spend anything to get cloaking and basic click tracking working. Two WordPress plugins dominate this space, and both have genuinely usable free versions.
Pretty Links Lite is the free tier of Pretty Links, available directly from the WordPress.org plugin repository. As of this guide’s research, it has 200,000+ active installs and a 4.8-out-of-5 rating across 1,321 reviews, and lists 301 (permanent) and 302/307 (temporary) redirects, per-link click tracking with referrer, IP, browser, OS and host data, bot filtering, CSV import/export, and even one-click Stripe checkout links (PrettyPay) — though the free tier adds a 3% PrettyLinks fee on top of Stripe’s own fees for those payment links specifically, which doesn’t apply to ordinary affiliate-link cloaking.
ThirstyAffiliates‘s free version, also on WordPress.org, covers the core job: cloaking a link from inside the post editor or its own “Affiliate Links” menu, SEO-friendly redirects, and the option to display a link as an image banner instead of a text hyperlink. Geo-cloaking (redirecting visitors in different countries to different storefronts) and automatic keyword-to-link linking are Pro-only additions, confirmed directly by the plugin’s own developer in response to user questions.
| Feature | Pretty Links Lite (free) | ThirstyAffiliates (free) |
|---|---|---|
| Branded/cloaked short links | Yes | Yes |
| Redirect types | 301 / 302 / 307 | 301 (SEO-friendly) |
| Click tracking detail | Referrer, IP, browser, OS, host | Basic click count (advanced stats are a paid add-on) |
| Image banners | Not a core feature | Yes |
| Geo-targeting / auto-link keywords | Not on free tier | Pro only |
| CSV import/export | Yes | Pro add-on |
When it’s worth paying
The free versions cover cloaking, redirects and basic click data — enough for a new affiliate site. You’d look at the paid tiers once you want things like: scheduled link rotation across multiple offers, deeper analytics (unique vs. total clicks broken down by date range), geo-targeting, a broken-link checker that flags dead affiliate links before a reader hits them, or REST API access to manage links programmatically.
Pretty Links Pro is sold as a flat annual fee rather than a monthly subscription. According to Capterra’s software-pricing listing, the tiers run roughly $99.60/year (Beginner), $149.60/year (Marketer) and $199.60/year (Super Affiliate), scaling mainly by the number of sites covered and added features like broken-link discovery. We couldn’t reach prettylinks.com’s own pricing page directly in this research session, so treat these as a current estimate and confirm the exact number before buying.
ThirstyAffiliates sells its Pro features and several add-ons (Geolocation, an Amazon/Azon link importer, a CSV importer, Google Analytics integration) either individually or bundled. We weren’t able to confirm current ThirstyAffiliates pricing from an up-to-date, reliable source in this session either — the figures floating around in older reviews are a few years stale — so check thirstyaffiliates.com directly rather than trusting a number here.
Step-by-step: cloak your first link for free
Using Pretty Links Lite as the example, since its free-tier feature set is the most fully documented of the two:
- Install and activate Pretty Links Lite from your WordPress dashboard (Plugins → Add New → search “Pretty Links”).
- Create a new link from the Pretty Links menu, paste your full affiliate URL into the “Target URL” field.
- Set a short, readable slug — for example
/go/toolname— instead of letting WordPress generate a random one. - Choose your redirect type. A 301 (permanent) redirect is the standard choice for affiliate links.
- Confirm the link attributes include
nofollow/sponsoredso the link is tagged correctly for Google, then save. - Use the short link (not the raw affiliate URL) anywhere you mention that offer, and check the built-in click reports after a few days of traffic to see what’s actually getting clicked.
- Shorter, cleaner URLs that don’t scare readers off before they click.
- One place to update a destination instead of editing every old post.
- Built-in click data, so you can see which offers and which posts actually convert attention into clicks.
- Correct
rel="sponsored"tagging applied automatically and consistently.
Cons / things to know:
- A cloaked link still has to point to a real, working affiliate link underneath — cloaking doesn’t fix a broken or expired offer.
- Free tiers cap out on deeper analytics and automation features that bigger affiliate sites eventually want.
- Over-redirecting (chaining several redirects) can slow a page down slightly, so keep the chain to one hop where possible.
FAQ
Q: Does cloaking an affiliate link break Google’s rules?
No — the opposite. Google’s own guidance asks commercial links to be tagged with rel="sponsored" or nofollow. A cloaking plugin that adds this automatically is helping you follow that guidance, not working around it.
Q: Do I need a paid plugin to get started?
No. Pretty Links Lite and ThirstyAffiliates’ free versions both handle cloaking, redirects and basic click tracking, which covers most new affiliate sites. Paid tiers add things like geo-targeting, deeper reporting and automated link rotation.
Q: Will a cloaked link still pass my commission through correctly?
Yes, as long as the plugin is redirecting to your actual, correctly-tagged affiliate URL underneath. Always test a new cloaked link yourself before promoting it, to confirm it lands on the right page with your affiliate ID intact.
Q: 301 or 302 redirect — which should I use for affiliate links?
301 (permanent) is the standard choice for affiliate links you intend to keep pointing at the same offer long-term.
Q: Can I switch from raw affiliate links to cloaked ones on an existing site?
Yes, though it means going back through old posts to replace the raw URLs with your new short links — both plugins support bulk/CSV import to speed this up, but there’s no way to retroactively cloak a link you’ve already published without editing that post.
Final verdict
For a new or growing affiliate site, cloaking isn’t optional polish — it’s basic infrastructure, the same way having an email list or a content calendar is. Start with whichever free plugin fits your workflow (Pretty Links Lite if you want built-in Stripe-style payment links too; ThirstyAffiliates if image banners matter to your layout), make sure every cloaked link is tagged rel="sponsored", and only move to a paid tier once you’re actually running enough offers that rotation, geo-targeting or deeper analytics would save you real time.
Related guides
- How Does Affiliate Marketing Actually Work? Honest Beginner’s Guide (2026)
- Best Affiliate Network for Beginners 2026: WarriorPlus vs JVZoo vs ClickBank vs Digistore24
- Top 5 Mistakes Beginners Make in Affiliate Marketing (And How to Fix Them)
- How to Do Keyword Research for Affiliate Blogs in 2026
Sources: WordPress.org plugin page for Pretty Link (free-tier feature list, 200,000+ active installs, 4.8/5 rating from 1,321 reviews, checked October 2026); third-party coverage (ShoutMeLoud review and plugin-author comment reply) of ThirstyAffiliates’ free vs. Pro feature split; Capterra’s Pretty Links pricing listing for paid-tier figures (not independently confirmed on prettylinks.com in this session — verify before purchase); and third-party summary of Google’s Search Central “qualifying outbound links” guidance on rel=”sponsored”/nofollow for affiliate links and the March 2020 hint-vs-directive change (the live Google Search Central page could not be fetched directly in this session). ThirstyAffiliates’ current paid pricing could not be reliably verified and is not stated above — check thirstyaffiliates.com directly. This guide does not promise any ranking, click-through or income outcome.