How to Cloak WooCommerce Affiliate Links?

Affiliate links are often necessary for tracking referrals, but they are not always attractive or easy to share. A WooCommerce affiliate URL may include tracking parameters, affiliate IDs, or referral codes that make the link look more complicated than a normal product URL.

This is where link cloaking comes in. It gives affiliates a cleaner-looking link while still preserving the tracking information needed to credit commissions correctly.

Why WooCommerce Affiliate Links May Need Cleanup

WooCommerce does not include affiliate link cloaking as a built-in feature. If a WooCommerce store owner gives an affiliate a tracking link, the affiliate will typically need to use that link as provided.

For example, the store’s affiliate system might create a URL like this:

https://examplestore.com/product-name/?ref=affiliateID

This link may work perfectly from a tracking perspective, but it is not always ideal from a presentation perspective. The referral parameter can make the link look more technical, less polished, or less familiar to shoppers.

The goal of cloaking is not to break the tracking. The goal is to present the link in a cleaner way while still sending the full referral information to the store.

The Traditional Approach: Use a Link-Cloaking Tool

The usual way for affiliates to clean up WooCommerce affiliate links is to use a WordPress link management plugin.

Tools such as Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates, and other redirect plugins allow affiliates to take a tracked URL and present it in a more attractive format. For example, instead of displaying a link like this:

https://examplestore.com/product-name/?ref=affiliateID

…an affiliate might present something easier to read and remember, such as:

https://examplestore.com/recommends/product-name

The cleaner version is what visitors see, while the original tracked affiliate URL remains the underlying destination. That way, the shopper sees a more polished link, but the affiliate ID is still passed along to the WooCommerce store.

Creating Cloaked Links With Solid Affiliate

There is another and arguably better way to create cloaked links, and that’s by using a plugin like Solid Affiliate:

Solid Affiliate is a WooCommerce affiliate plugin that lets store owners create and manage a full affiliate program from inside WordPress. It includes the core tools needed to run an affiliate system, such as affiliate registration and approval, affiliate link creation, visit and referral tracking, flexible commission settings, order-based referral tracking, automatic commission calculations, refund and cancellation handling, payout management, and reporting.

It also provides support for custom affiliate slugs, as you can see in the bottom half of this screen:

A default affiliate link may use a generic or numeric identifier. With custom slugs, affiliates can use a cleaner referral identifier that is easier to recognize and share.

This gives affiliates cleaner links without forcing them to install and configure a separate link cloaking plugin on their own website.

Final Thoughts

WooCommerce does not cloak affiliate links on its own.

Affiliates can handle this themselves with tools like Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates, or another redirect plugin. However, WooCommerce store owners can also solve the same problem by using Solid Affiliate. Its custom slug feature gives affiliates cleaner referral links directly from the store, reducing the need for each affiliate to set up separate link-cloaking tools.

For other options, see The 5 Best Affiliate Plugins for WooCommerce.