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URL Masking: HTML | iframe | htaccess | Domain Level

Want to hide your URL from users? So, this technique will ensure your visitors only see the source or original URL and not the destination URL.
Reading Time: 10 minutes
url masking

There are a few reasons why you might want to use URL masking. One common use case is to make a long, complex URL shorter and more memorable. This can be useful for websites that are frequently shared or for marketing campaigns where the URL is printed on flyers or business cards. URL masking can also be used to conceal the true destination of a link, which can be useful for tracking clicks or for hiding affiliate links.

Table of Contents

What is URL Masking?

URL masking is a technique used to conceal the true URL of a website or webpage. This is typically done by creating a redirect from a domain or subdomain that is easy to remember to the actual URL. For example, a website with the URL “https://example.com/pages/long-page-name” might be accessible via a URL mask of “https://myurl.com“. When a user navigates to “https://myurl.com“, they will be automatically redirected to “https://example.com/pages/long-page-name“, but the true URL will not be visible in the browser’s address bar.

URL masking can be implemented in a few different ways, depending on the hosting environment. One of the simplest ways to accomplish URL masking is to use the .htaccess file on an Apache web server to configure a redirect from one URL to another. This can be done using the mod_rewrite module, which allows you to specify rules for rewriting the URL. Another way to implement URL masking is to use a “frames” HTML element, which allows you to embed one webpage within another. This can be used to create the appearance of a single webpage, while the true URL is hidden behind the scenes.

URL Masking is considered black hat seo practice and is not recommeded as it may harm the reputation of the website and can also get penalized by search engines.

Example of URL Masking?

An example of URL masking might be a website that sells products through an affiliate program. The affiliate program gives each member a unique referral link that includes the affiliate’s ID, such as “https://example.com?aff=123“. These links can be long and complex, and may not be suitable for sharing on social media or for use in marketing materials.

To make the link more manageable, the affiliate might use URL masking to create a shorter, more memorable link. For example, they might register the domain “https://promo.com” and use a redirect to forward all traffic to the original affiliate link. Now, instead of sharing the long and complex link, the affiliate can share “https://promo.com” with potential customers.

When a user clicks on the “https://promo.com” link, they will be redirected to “https://example.com?aff=123” but the true URL will not be visible in the browser’s address bar. This makes the link more manageable and memorable for users, and allows the affiliate to track clicks and conversions more easily.

As I mentioned earlier, URL masking can be considered as Black hat SEO practice and it may harm your website’s ranking and reputation. Search engines like Google may penalize websites that engage in URL masking. Instead, you can use redirects to pass the link juice to the target page while also preserving the original link.

When to use URL Masking?

As I mentioned earlier, URL masking can be useful in certain situations, such as:

  • Shortening long, complex URLs to make them more manageable and memorable.
  • Concealing the true destination of a link for tracking clicks or hiding affiliate links.

However, it is important to note that URL masking can also be considered a black hat SEO technique, and it is not recommended as it can harm your website’s reputation and ranking in search engine results. Search engines like Google may penalize websites that engage in URL masking.

If you have a long URL and want it to be shorter to share on social media, you can use URL shortener services that are available for free on the internet. These services will shorten the URL for you, and will not affect the SEO of the site. They will also provide tracking data on clicks and other metrics

If you want to redirect a link to a different address, 301 redirects are the best approach as it will pass on the SEO value of the link to the redirected page, this is considered a white hat SEO practice.

It’s important to understand the implications of URL masking and the potential harm it can do to your website, and it’s always best to avoid it and use alternative solutions.

Security Measures of URL Masking?

URL masking can be used as a security measure in certain situations, but it’s important to keep in mind that it is not a replacement for other, more robust security measures.

One way that URL masking can be used as a security measure is to conceal the true location of sensitive pages or resources on a website. For example, an organization might use URL masking to hide the location of their login page, to make it more difficult for attackers to find and target the page.

Another way URL masking is used for security is to prevent the leakage of internal URLs. By masking internal URLs behind a single external URL, it can make it harder for an attacker to find and exploit vulnerabilities on internal systems.

However, URL masking alone is not enough to secure a website, as it does not prevent attacks on the underlying web server or application

Does URL Masking impact SEO?

URL masking can have an impact on SEO in multiple ways:

  1. Search engine crawlers rely on the URLs to identify the pages and understand their content, If the search engine is not able to access the original URL it may not be able to crawl the page, index it and show it in the search results.

  2. URL masking can cause duplicate content issues as the search engines may crawl and index the original URL as well as the masked URL, which can lead to multiple copies of the same page in the search results.

  3. Masking URLs can cause a loss of link equity, because when a user clicks on the masked URL, it gets redirected to the original URL. Any inbound links to the masked URL will not pass their link equity to the original URL, because search engines consider them as separate URLs

  4. Search engine penalties. URL masking is considered a black hat SEO technique, and search engines may penalize websites that engage in it, which can result in a decrease in search engine rankings and visibility.

Instead of URL Masking, you can use 301 redirects which will keep the link equity and won’t create duplicate content issues. You can also shorten the URL by using URL shorteners, but it is important to keep track of the clicks and engagement on the short link, and also be aware that it would not pass the link equity to the target page.

It’s always a good idea to take a holistic approach to SEO and consider how your website’s URLs fit into the bigger picture, including the user experience, content and link equity.

How to Mask Domain in cPanel?

In cPanel of our Linux Hosting, you can use the “Redirects” feature to mask a domain. Here are the steps to do this:

  1. Log into your cPanel account.
  2. Scroll down to the “Domains” section and click on the “Redirects” icon.
  3. In the “Redirects” section, select the type of redirect you want to use. The most common option is “Permanent (301)” which tells search engines that the redirect is permanent, and that the link equity should be passed along to the target URL.
  4. In the “Type” drop-down, select “Only redirect with www”. This will forward any request to your domain to www version of your domain name
  5. In the “Redirects to” field, enter the target URL, where you want the requests to be redirected to.
  6. click on “Add” to save the redirect.

Please note that this will forward all requests to the domain to the target URL, including requests for the homepage and any subdirectories or files. Any links pointing to the original domain will redirect to the new domain, but it will not change the address on the browser’s address bar.

It’s important to keep in mind that, masking a domain with cPanel will not affect the SEO of the website and it’s not recommended to use it for SEO purposes. It is mainly used for the purpose of ease of access and remembering the URLs

If you are not comfortable with doing this by yourself, you can always consult your web hosting provider for help.

domain masking windows plesk?

In Plesk of Windows Hosting, you can use the “Website Redirection” feature to mask a domain. Here are the steps to do this:

  1. Log in to your Plesk account
  2. Click on the “Websites & Domains” tab
  3. Click on the domain that you want to mask
  4. Click on the “Hosting Settings” button
  5. Under the “Redirect to a URL” section, enter the target URL, where you want the requests to be redirected to.
  6. Click on the “OK” button to save the redirect

This will forward all requests to the domain to the target URL, including requests for the homepage and any subdirectories or files.

Please note that like cPanel, it will not change the address on the browser’s address bar. It’s important to note that like cPanel, masking a domain with Plesk will not affect the SEO of the website and it’s not recommended to use it for SEO purposes. It is mainly used for the purpose of ease of access and remembering the URLs.

It’s best to avoid domain masking as it can harm your website’s reputation and ranking in search engine results, and create a poor user experience. Instead, you can use other solutions such as 301 redirects, URL shorteners and other methods that can preserve the link equity, content and user experience.

Types of URL Masking

There are a few different types of URL masking techniques, including:

  1. Domain Masking: This is the most common type of URL masking, in which a domain or subdomain is used to redirect users to a different URL. This can be used to make a long, complex URL shorter and more memorable, or to conceal the true destination of a link.

  2. Frame Masking: This technique uses an HTML frameset to embed one webpage within another, giving the appearance of a single webpage while hiding the true URL. This technique can make it more difficult for users to determine the true URL of a page, and can also be used to track clicks or to hide affiliate links. However, This is not recommended as it can cause issues with SEO, Bookmarking and user experience.

  3. Meta Refresh: It is a method of redirecting a website by using a meta tag in the head of the HTML document, it can be used to redirect a webpage to another webpage. However, this method is slower than others, and is not as reliable and it can also cause issues with SEO and user experience.

  4. JavaScript redirect: A JavaScript function can be used to redirect the website to another webpage, this method is not recommended as it can cause issues with SEO and user experience.

  5. htaccess: used on Apache web servers

Domain-level Masking

Domain level masking is a technique used to conceal the true domain of a website or webpage, while still keeping the same functionality and functionality of the website. Instead of redirecting traffic to a different URL, it uses a technique to change the appearance of the URL in the browser’s address bar. This can be done by using an iframe, a JavaScript redirect or a frameset to embed the website in a subdomain or subfolder, this way the user interacts with the website as usual, but the URL in the browser’s address bar will not reflect the true domain of the website.

It’s important to note that Domain level masking can cause several issues with SEO, user experience and accessibility. Search engines use URLs to understand the structure of a website, and hiding the true domain can make it difficult for search engines to understand the relationship between pages. Additionally, it can be hard for users to understand the true source of a website and it can also cause accessibility issues for users who rely on assistive technologies.

Additionally, it may also cause issues with cookies and sessions. If the true domain and the masked domain are different, the browser will treat them as separate websites, which means that cookies and sessions will not be shared between them. This can lead to issues with logging in, shopping carts, and other functionalities that rely on cookies and sessions.

It’s best to avoid domain level masking as it can harm your website’s reputation and ranking in search engine results, and create a poor user experience. Instead, you can use other solutions such as 301 redirects, URL shorteners and other methods that can preserve the link equity, content and user experience.

IFRAME Tag For URL Masking

Here the browser’s URL remains the same even though the content in the IFRAME is from a different URL only when a web page with an IFRAME is loaded into the browser and then content loaded into the IFRAME.

This method can leave visual signs that the displayed page is not the page at the URL in the browser’s address bar.
Whereas, the frameset tag for URL masking can hide all visual signs that the displayed URL isn’t at the URL in the browser’s address bar.

IFRAME is commonly used to load embedded content from websites like YouTube.

1. Create a web page with an IFRAME that loads the target web page.

2. Create a web page that consists of the following code.

3. Change the URL in the fourth line of the code to the URL of the web page to be displayed in the browser.

4. Upload the IFRAME web page to your server.

5. Now load the IFRAME web page into your browser.

5. So here you’ll notice the URL of the IFRAME web page is in your browser’s address bar at a different web page, the one mentioned in the fourth line.

<html>
<body>
<iframe
  src="http://netspace.com/page.html"
 frameborder="0"
 width="960"
 height="2500"
 scrolling="no">
</frameset>
</body>
</html>
</iframe>

.htaccess Rewrite Directive for URL Masking

.htaccess is a configuration file used on Apache web servers to control various aspects of the server’s behavior. It can be used to implement URL masking by creating a redirect from one URL to another. Here’s an example of how you could use .htaccess to mask a domain:

				
					RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

				
			

This code tells the Apache server to enable the RewriteEngine, and then it checks the HTTP_HOST variable to see if the incoming request is for “example.com”. If the request is for “example.com”, it is redirected to “http://www.example.com/“.

This example uses a “permanent” redirect (HTTP status code 301), this tells search engines that the redirection is permanent. If a search engine bot requests example.com it will be redirected to www.example.com and this way the link equity will be passed to the new domain.

It’s important to note that this .htaccess code is just an example, and it will not work without being properly configured on a web server. To implement it, you would need to have access to your web server and the ability to edit the .htaccess file, You could also contact your web hosting provider for further help.

Just like I have mentioned in previous answers, URL Masking, specifically Domain masking, is not recommended as it may harm your website’s reputation and ranking in search engine results, it’s better to use alternative solutions such as redirects

URL Retrieval for URL Masking

A web page is retrieved from a different URL and inserted at the web page of the current URL.

Below is the .php code to perform URL retrieval. Replace /page with the page you want to pull in, then save it as a .php file. Upload the file to your server and enter the file’s URL into your browser.

<?php echo file_get_contents("/page.html"); ?>

Advantages of URL Masking

URL masking is commonly used to hide undesirable, long, lengthy links, in-order to beautify and shorten them and to create a nice-looking experience for users.

This technique might hold visitors and keep them engaged.

Disadvantages of URL Masking

URL masking can harm your SEO rankings, UX issues, and website authority. This can gradually lead to a poor user interface and user experience.

When a proper navigation address is lost by the user, this might lead the user to navigate to a different website.

Masked URLs are difficult to save and share as when saved they’ll lead to the homepage only.

Online hackers make use of URL masking to hide malicious content.

If you want your visitors to share, trust and visit your content avoid using URL masking.

Conclusion

This technique should only be used when deemed necessary, although it is very much effective for marketing strategy.

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Tejaswini

Tejaswini

I’m translating complex technical ideas into concise, business-oriented content and storylines! I ensure every article we publish is EPIC. My team and I help people better understand their search.

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