How to Set Up Cloaking:
Step-by-Step Tutorial

Prerequisites

Before setting up cloaking, ensure you have:

• A cloaking software subscription — see our Best Cloaking Software guide for criteria
• A safe page — a policy-compliant landing page (also called white page)
• A money page — your actual offer page (also called black page)
• A domain — either your own or one provided by the cloaker
• Ad account access — Facebook, TikTok, or Google Ads

Step 1 — Choose a Cloaking Software

Not all cloakers are equal. For Facebook Ads and TikTok Ads, you need behavioral fingerprinting — IP-only cloaking fails against residential proxy reviewers and device farms. For Google Ads, IP blocking works better because Googlebot IPs are documented, but behavioral detection still helps catch human reviewers.

Key criteria: daily-updated IP database, real-time analytics, and explicit support for your target platforms. See our full Best Cloaking Software guide for the evaluation checklist.

Step 2 — Create Your Safe Page

The safe page is what platform bots and reviewers see. It must be:

• Policy-compliant — no claims, imagery, or content that violates platform rules
• Keyword-relevant — H1, meta title, and body content matching your ad's targeted keywords (critical for Google Ads Quality Score)
• Fast — LCP under 2.5s, CLS under 0.1 (affects Quality Score on Google)
• Complete — About, Contact, Privacy Policy, Return Policy links

For dropshipping: the safe page should look like a real product page, just without before/after imagery, fake urgency, or misleading shipping claims. See Cloaking for Dropshipping for the safe vs money page comparison.

Host the safe page on the same domain as your money page (or use the cloaker's built-in hosting if available). Same domain improves trust signals.

Step 3 — Create Your Money Page

The money page is your offer. It can be:

• On the same domain — different path (e.g. /product vs /product-offer)
• On a different domain — if the cloaker supports redirects

Best practice: serve the money page in-place from the same URL when possible, rather than redirecting. Redirects can be logged and flagged by platform monitoring. Quality cloakers serve the safe page directly from the same domain; no URL change occurs.

Step 4 — Configure the Cloaker

In your cloaker dashboard:

1. Create a new campaign — give it a name (e.g. "FB Nutra Q1")
2. Upload or link your safe page — URL or HTML upload
3. Upload or link your money page — URL or HTML upload
4. Select target platforms — Facebook, TikTok, Google (or all)
5. Set detection sensitivity — if the cloaker offers a threshold slider, start conservative (fewer false positives)

Step 5 — Get Your Cloaked URL

The cloaker generates a URL — typically a subdomain or path on their infrastructure (e.g. https://campaign.cloaker.com/abc123) or a CNAME you point your domain to.

This URL is your ad destination. When a visitor clicks:

• Bot/reviewer → Cloaker detects → Safe page served
• Real user → Cloaker detects → Money page served

Copy the cloaked URL. You will paste it into your ad platform as the landing page URL.

Step 6 — Submit Your Ad

Create your ad with the cloaked URL as the destination. When you submit:

1. The platform's crawler requests the URL
2. The cloaker identifies it as a bot → serves safe page
3. The platform approves the ad (safe page is compliant)
4. Real users who click later → cloaker serves money page

Step 7 — Monitor and Maintain

Use your cloaker's analytics dashboard to:

• Watch bot detection rate — a sudden spike (e.g. 5% to 25% in 6 hours) can indicate a platform review sweep
• Pause if needed — pause the campaign for 24–48 hours during a sweep to reduce ban risk
• Check false positive rate — if real users are being shown the safe page, adjust sensitivity

See Risks of Cloaking for the full risk profile and mitigation strategies.

Common Setup Mistakes