A normal redirect is honest about its destination: the address bar flips to the target the instant the visitor lands. A branded (masked) redirect does the opposite — the visitor stays on your domain in the address bar while the destination page loads quietly underneath.
When masking earns its keep
- Affiliate and partner links — the link reads yourbrand.com/recommends/tool and keeps looking that way, instead of flashing a tracking URL on the way past.
- Creator and newsletter links — everything you publish keeps one consistent, memorable domain in the browser, even when the content lives elsewhere.
- Confidence — people trust an address they recognize; a naked third-party URL after a click invites hesitation.
How it works, honestly
A masked link serves a full-screen frame that loads the destination inside your page, so the address bar never changes. That has one inherent limit: a destination can refuse to be framed (big sites like banks and social networks often do), in which case the visitor sees your frame with a visible "open directly" escape link. Masking suits pages that permit framing — check yours once before printing the link everywhere.
Pair it with referrer hiding
Next to the redirect type you'll find a hide referrer switch. With it on, the destination site is told not to receive your domain as the referring page — their analytics see the traffic without being told where it came from. For affiliate links, that keeps your source domains out of other people's dashboards entirely.
Masked links are real links in every other sense: they get click analytics, QR codes, and schedules like any redirect — they just trade the bounce for a frame. For a related take on shortening versus masking, see branded short links.