How to Hide Referral Links: A Practical Guide for Marketers

Affiliate and referral marketing can be powerful revenue drivers, but raw referral links are often long, messy, and can turn off potential customers. By learning how to hide referral links, you can make your URLs more trustworthy, user-friendly, and brand-aligned—all while protecting your commissions.

In this guide, we’ll explain why hiding referral links matters, methods you can use, and how tools like Linkly make the process seamless.

Unmasked referral links have drawbacks:

• Unattractive URLs: Long query strings with IDs discourage clicks
• Trust issues: Users may hesitate to click a link that looks suspicious
• Commission theft: Tech-savvy users can strip tracking IDs, costing you revenue
• Blocked by filters: Some platforms and email filters automatically block known affiliate domains

Hiding (or cloaking) referral links solves these problems by making them cleaner, shorter, and brand-safe.

Learn more about link cloaking.

Tools like Linkly let you create short, branded links. Instead of sharing a long affiliate URL, you share a neat vanity link, e.g.:

https://go.yourbrand.com/product

This makes the link trustworthy, memorable, and click-worthy.
Learn how Linkly shortens URLs

Using your own domain builds brand authority. Linkly supports custom domains, so you can hide referrals behind URLs that align with your website.

Benefits:

• Reinforces brand consistency
• Reduces risk of being flagged as spam
• Gives you control over link structure

Another common method is creating a dedicated page on your site that redirects to the affiliate link. While simple, this method can be harder to manage at scale compared to using a dedicated link management platform.

With advanced link cloaking, the affiliate ID is hidden, making it harder for users to bypass your referral code. Paired with click tracking, you gain detailed insights into link performance.

Linkly goes beyond just shortening links:

• Custom domains and vanity URLs to keep links branded
• Detailed click tracking to analyze campaign performance
• Retargeting pixels to build audiences from link clicks
• Integration with Zapier to connect with thousands of apps
• Free plan with 1,000 clicks/month

This makes Linkly a complete solution for managing, protecting, and optimizing referral links.

• Always disclose affiliate relationships for compliance (e.g., FTC guidelines)
• Use descriptive slugs instead of random strings (e.g., /best-headphones instead of /x1y2z3)
• Monitor performance with analytics to optimize campaigns
• Avoid over-cloaking—make sure links still look natural

Hiding referral links isn’t about being deceptive—it’s about creating clean, trustworthy, and trackable URLs that drive more clicks and safeguard your earnings.

Ready to hide your referral links the smart way? Get started with Linkly today and experience seamless link cloaking, branded domains, and advanced tracking.