What is cloaking in SEO?

[Fanaticalchin961]

What is cloaking? I want to know about cloaking in seo. Please suggest...

[netxchange]

Basics of Cloaking

Cloaking generally means to present different version of web page contents from of search engines to search robots and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address. It's a deceptive method used to cheat search engines in order to rank well for desired keywords.

Not always but in most of the cases, cloaking is also used to trick users to visit certain websites based on their description in search engines. For example a user searching for some product may click on a website in search engine based on its description and title but the final website will not be the one described in SERP's. It will be a totally different one. Therefore, these practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines should be avoided.

[Animesh Sarkar]

This is the glossary definition for Cloaking in SEO from my E-marketing glossary which provides succinct definitions of the many terms related to managing and implementing Internet marketing today.

For each Internet marketing term I define, there is a link below to all other pages on this site that provide more detailed information, including the latest developments. So this Internet marketing glossary is not static, but continually updated.

I started talking about cloaking in a corner of the web, and I figured it would make sense to talk about cloaking in a separate post. Consider this a me-typing-this-quickly post, but better to get something down than to not get a chance to talk about it.)

Cloaking is serving different content to users than to search engines. It’s interesting that you don’t see all that much cloaking to deliver spam these days. If you see people doing spam, they tend to rely on sneaky redirects (often via JavaScript) more than cloaking. For example, a blackhat might make a doorway or keyword stuffed/gibberish page plus something like a JavaScript redirect to go to a completely different page.

Here’s the recent timeline of Philipp Lenssen talking about cloaking and WebmasterWorld (WMW) as I see it:
- Philipp wrote this post in late November: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-11-28-n23.html
The basic point was that if you searched for [php-based cms] and clicked on the #1 result (which was WMW), you would get a registration page rather than the page that Googlebot saw.
- I didn’t have the cycles to deal with it right then, but earlier this year I made it clear that WMW would be removed if it met the definition of cloaking when I tested it.
- I believe the administrator (Brett) of WMW made code changes to the site so that WMW would not be considered cloaking.
- I recently tested with the example Philipp originally mentioned. I did a search for [php-based cms], clicked on the #1 result, and got the same page that Googlebot saw with no registration page.

Those code changes address many of concerns I’ve heard regarding WMW (that users who click on the results don’t get what Googlebot crawled).

So I consider Philipp’s November article acted on. Philipp’s December post about it (http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006...-n85.html) cited the same search for [php-based cms], so I consider that acted on as well.

I believe that takes the timeline up to February. I’m aware of two other posts Philipp did on this topic, both in February. The first is http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum44/1287.htm that you get redirected to a registration page. When I tried it just now, I got the actual page with a “Welcome to WebmasterWorld Guest from (ip address)”. The question I’d look at for this report was if you typed this url into Google, and then clicked on the result–does the user receive the same content that Google saw?

The other article that I’m aware of is http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-02-20-n47.html where Philipp states that sometimes Google allows sites to go against our webmaster practices. But that statement includes an asterisk; the disclaimer at the bottom of that post is “WebmasterWorld doesn’t always show the registration page; they sometimes show the content that was available in the snippet.” As I understand it, that disclaimer acknowledges that some of the time, WMW gives users what Googlebot crawled. When I get a chance to tackle Philipp’s most recent report, I’ll be looking at consistency: when a Google user clicks on a search result at Google, they should always see the same page that Googlebot saw. It will take me a little time to check out, because it’s a report of behavior that often meets our guidelines (e.g. cookies, referrers, IP addresses might all come into play), but I do intend to investigate this issue when I get the cycles. I won’t consider this issue closed until I have the time to investigate how consistently the return-the-same-content-as-Googlebot-saw behavior happens; it should happen for every click from a Google search result.

To sum up, we did take action on Philipp’s questions about WMW. I consider the issue in a much better state now, in that most (all?) Google searchers get the identical page to what Googlebot saw. But I still consider Philipp’s February posts open for investigation, and I will get to them, in the same way that I tackled Philipp’s first two posts about this.

[siva]

Hello friend,
It means hide the abuse content for getting good position in SERP. It is non ethical way.
with regards,
Siva

[Rob]

Cloaking is the process of providing the search engine with one set of web Page while the Internet customer receives a attractive web page.Cloaking is basically a black hat seo technique in which one page is redirected to other.

[Imran Ali]

Usually disguised means to render different versions of the content of the page to search for the IP address of the user agent or browser-based, robotic and human visitors from the search engines. This is used to trick the search engines to rank the desired keywords and deceptive methods.
Not always, but in most cases, the camouflage is also used to trick users to access certain sites based on their search engine description. For example, a user may be looking for some products in the search engine site click accordance with the description and title, but the final site is not in the description of the search results page. It will be a totally different one. Therefore, the purpose of these practices should be avoided is to manipulate search engines and to guide their websites to trick users other than those of their choice, as well as providing content exclusively for the benefit of search engines

[Thomas]

Hi the best way to protect your links is to cloak it. You can go here to download a FREE affiliate link cloaking script and I also explain how it works here. It also works with Amazon s3 hosted pages.