Home Features Link masking

Keep your link in the address bar.

Link masking — also called link cloaking or URL masking — shows your short URL in the browser address bar the whole visit while the destination loads underneath. Branded, white-label on a custom domain, and safe for SEO.
Big Slash.

Mask your first link Read the guide
https://go.yourco.com/launch

Destination page

Spring launch is live

your URL stays put

What it is

Your short link stays visible.

A normal short link redirects: click it and the destination’s long URL takes over the address bar. Link masking keeps your short URL in the bar the entire visit while the destination loads in a full-viewport frame underneath. The visitor reads your brand, not someone else’s domain.

One toggle on any link.

Flip Keep my link in the address bar on a link and slsh.me serves the destination inside your own branded wrapper. No redirect away, no other name in the bar, no second tab.

It works on a slsh.me subdomain out of the box and becomes a full white-label on your custom domain.

  • Affiliate links that keep your domain in the bar, not the merchant’s.
  • Campaign links where the short URL is the brand on every channel.
  • Creator bio links that never flash a raw destination URL.
https://go.yourco.com/launch
Stays put — your URL never flips to the destination
Branded — on a custom domain it is a full white-label
One toggle — turn it on per link, no setup thread

White-label

Pair it with your domain for the full brand experience.

Masking is good on a slsh.me link. It’s complete on yours. Point a custom domain at slsh.me and the address bar shows go.yourco.com/launch the whole visit — the destination’s domain never appears.

Add a branded social card and the three things a visitor sees all wear your domain: the short link they click, the preview that unfurls in the chat, and the page that loads. One coherent brand, end to end.

  • The link: go.yourco.com/launch
  • The preview: your title, description, and image
  • The page: loads masked, your URL stays in the bar
https://go.yourco.com/launch
Your domain in the bar — the destination is never shown
Branded preview — pair with custom social cards
Big Slash — masking + custom domains on one plan

How it works

Three steps, and a pre-flight check.

Turn masking on per link. Before it goes live, slsh.me checks whether the destination allows being framed and warns you up front if it doesn’t — so you never publish a masked link that lands on a blank frame.

1

Paste your URL

Create a short link and paste the HTTPS destination you want to mask. Masked pages are https only — no mixed content.

2

Toggle the mask

Flip Keep my link in the address bar. We run a pre-flight check for X-Frame-Options / CSP and warn you if the site blocks framing.

3

Save

Save the link. Visitors now see your short URL the whole visit while the destination loads underneath. On a custom domain it’s a full white-label.

Is masking safe?

Transparent masking, not deceptive cloaking.

“Cloaking” has a bad name because Google penalizes deceptive cloaking — showing crawlers different content than users. And naive masking can create duplicate content or block indexing. slsh.me masking is the legitimate, transparent kind, built so neither problem can happen.

Built so it can’t hijack your SEO.

The masked frame is served noindex,nofollow with a canonical pointing at the destination — so there’s no duplicate-content footprint and nothing for search engines to index in place of the real page.

  • noindex frame + canonical to destination — no duplicate content, no index hijack.
  • HTTPS only — the masked page is always secure, no mixed content.
  • Pre-flight check — we warn you up front if a site blocks embedding.
  • Iframe-based, not a proxy — your own branded wrapper, not content rewriting, and not deceptive crawler cloaking.

Same content for everyone, real page stays canonical. That’s the whole difference between transparent masking and the cloaking Google penalizes.

https://go.yourco.com/launch
noindex,nofollow — the frame is never indexed
canonical → destination — the real page keeps its ranking
HTTPS only — no mixed content, no proxy rewriting

Link masking vs redirect

Same click. Different address bar.

Both start with a short link. The difference is what the visitor sees in the address bar once the page loads.

Plain redirect

go.yourco.com/launch → longsite.com/...

  • The destination URL replaces your short link in the bar.
  • Fastest path to the page; nothing loads in a frame.
  • Best when you don’t mind the destination domain showing.

Link masking

go.yourco.com/launch stays in the bar

  • Your short URL stays in the bar the entire visit.
  • The destination loads in a full-viewport frame underneath.
  • Best when your branded link should stay visible the whole time.

Questions

The honest answers.

What is link masking?
Link masking is showing a short URL in the browser address bar while the real destination page loads behind it. The visitor sees your branded link (for example go.yourco.com/launch) the whole visit instead of the long destination URL. slsh.me does this by serving the destination in a full-viewport iframe so your link, not the destination, stays in the address bar.
Is link masking the same as link cloaking?
Most searchers use link masking, link cloaking and URL masking to mean the same thing: keeping the short URL visible while the destination loads. The terms are interchangeable for this feature. The word “cloaking” also has a separate, deceptive meaning in SEO (showing search crawlers different content than users) — that is not what slsh.me does. slsh.me masking is transparent: same content for everyone, with the framed page served noindex.
Is link masking bad for SEO?
Naive masking can hurt SEO by creating duplicate content or hijacking indexing. slsh.me avoids this. The masked frame is served noindex,nofollow with a canonical pointing at the destination, so there is no duplicate-content or index-hijacking risk. It is iframe-based — your own branded wrapper — not a content-rewriting proxy, and it is not deceptive crawler cloaking. That distinction is exactly why transparent masking is safe and deceptive cloaking is penalized.
Does link masking work on every site?
No. Some sites block being embedded in a frame using X-Frame-Options or a Content-Security-Policy frame-ancestors rule (most banks and some big platforms do). slsh.me runs a pre-flight check when you turn masking on and warns you up front if the destination can’t be framed, so you find out before you publish the link, not after.
Link masking vs a redirect — what’s the difference?
A plain redirect sends the visitor to the destination, so the destination URL replaces your short link in the address bar. Link masking keeps your short URL in the address bar the entire visit while the destination loads underneath. Use a redirect when you don’t mind the destination showing; use masking when you want your branded link to stay visible the whole time.
Do I need a custom domain for link masking?
No, but it’s much better with one. On a slsh.me subdomain, masking keeps your short link in the bar. On your own custom domain it becomes a full white-label: the address bar shows go.yourco.com/launch the whole visit and never reveals the destination. Pair it with a branded social card and the link, the preview, and the page all wear your domain. Link masking is part of the Big Slash plan.

Keep reading

New to the topic? Read the guide on link masking vs cloaking. Then set up custom domains and branded social cards for the full white-label — all on Big Slash.

Keep your link in the address bar.

Branded, white-label, and safe for SEO. Big Slash.

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