Quote:
Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks
You don’t have to cloak links, just throw them into a database and call them like site.com/?id=porn or whatever you want to use.
Cloaking doesn’t have to be a blackhat thing that uses redirects, if it’s done responsibly, the other benefit of this is that if you use the same links across a full network of sites, you only have to change an entry in the database and all of your links network wise will change automagically  |
I'm not sure how that would help make such links less "affiliate obvious". Google follows every link however it is structured. It determines the destination by resolving all bounces on your end (from translating a db param url to an actual sponsor link) all the way though to the destination page.
I have never used sponsor links directly - all of them are wrapped in ways you have suggested.
"Cloaking" (black hat) would involve not rendering those links when the spider is "looking" at the page. I don't do black hat.