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Link Cloaking and Google Ads: What's Allowed and What Gets You Suspended

Cloaking is a top reason for Google Ads account suspensions. Learn the difference between legitimate tracking redirects and policy-violating cloaking, and how to stay compliant.

"Cloaking" in Google Ads policy means showing different content to Google than to users — for example, sending Google's review systems to a clean page while real visitors land somewhere else. It is one of the fastest ways to get an account suspended, and appeals are rarely successful.

Cloaking vs tracking redirects — the crucial difference

A tracking redirect sends everyone — users, crawlers, Google — through the same hop to the same destination, and just records the click on the way. That is how every legitimate click tracker works, and it is allowed.

Cloaking inspects the visitor (user-agent, IP range, geography, referrer) and deliberately routes Google's systems to different content than real users. That violates the Circumventing Systems policy.

Grey-zone features and where the line is

  • Geo redirects — sending all visitors from country X to offer A and country Y to offer B is generally fine if Google sees the same behavior. Hiding the real destination from Google specifically is not.
  • Bot filtering — blocking known data-center bots from hammering your link is common. Using bot detection to show Google a different page is cloaking.
  • Device routing — iOS users to the App Store, desktop to a web page: fine, as long as it applies to everyone equally.

What Google actually checks

  • Final landing page content must match what the ad promises.
  • Redirect chains should be short, server-side (301/302), and consistent for all visitors.
  • Google offers a Certified Click Tracker program: trackers that commit to a single transparent 302 hop can be certified, which reduces review friction for advertisers using them.

How AffPixel handles this

Short links on the main domain (affpixel.com/r/…) run in a strict transparent mode: one server-side 302, no user-agent sniffing, no content differences, no-store caching — designed around the Certified Click Tracker requirements. Advanced smart-link features (geo rules, A/B variants) are separated so your Google Ads links stay clean by construction.

Checklist before you submit a tracked URL to Google Ads

  1. Open the link in an incognito window — you should reach the real offer in one redirect.
  2. Check with curl -I from a server — status should be 302, not a JS redirect or meta refresh.
  3. Confirm the final page works without cookies or JavaScript.
  4. Make sure the destination domain matches the display URL's implied site.

Related: Affiliate Link Tracking Guide.