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[Moderator Note: This thread of discussion began as a part of the "Black hat techniques and what confuses me" discussion, but has been separated off into its own thread, since it represents a related, but subtly different line of discussion. ~ BK]



I have to seriously disagree. Ethics isn't just how you treat people, it is also a standard you hold yourself to as part of a profession.
( http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ethics&r=67 )

Bruce Clay's Code of Ethics is an example.

Beyond that, there are marketing and sales techniques in more established, offline arenas that are explicitly illegal. Bait and Switch advertising, pyramid schemes and the like. Dummy biding at Real Estate Auctions is a topic that is huge in Sydney right now (that is where a real estate agent or an affiliated party makes fake bids to drive up an auctions price). Even before dummy bidding was explicitly illegal, there were moral and ethical reasons not to use such a technique. Now that dummy bidding is explicitly illegal, there are still agents that continue to make dummy bids.


True, but that is neither a reason to not discuss it in such a light, nor an argument for techniques being morally and ethically neutral.


Glad you asked

Online Marketing is a young industry, and many comments about ethics make the (very false) assumption that there are not pre-existing laws that dictate how such advertising should be conducted. I can't speak for other countries, but in Australia, The Trade Practices Act is the overriding legislation for all business activity. It governs businesses in all sectors, and is the basis of consumer protection and fair business practice.

Section 52 of the act states:

Now, is cloaking "...misleading or deceptive" or is it "...likely to mislead or deceive"? I think that an argument could be made, and made quite reasonably, that that is exactly what cloaking does. Similarly, hidden text, hidden links and a number of other "tricks" could reasonably fall into the category of "misleading or deceptive" in the same way that there have been cases in which the terms and conditions, even when present on a document, have been deemed misleading due to the size of text chosen.

This is in absolute opposition to the practice of changing a page using so called "white hat" SEO. There is no deception, it is all visible and clear.

Now, it is true that no such determination has ever been made that I am aware of, but equally I am aware of no rebuttal to such a position.

A view that SEO / SEM techniques are ethically, legally and morally neutral that fails to address how those techniques co-exist with current legislation is flawed. To assume such legislation doesn't govern this industry is also flawed, at least in Australia.

So, to bring it back full circle, is cloaking ethically acceptable? That really depends upon your personal ethical beliefs, and whether or not you believe cloaking is legal.

If you think that cloaking isn't deceptive or misleading, the point is mute. If you choose to place the client at the nexus of all decisions, and place the client higher than legalities, then cloaking will always be acceptable. If your personal ethics place other concerns higher than the client, for example a desire not to break existing laws governing fair practice, even when those laws have not been challenged, then you will probably not find cloaking acceptable.

So, IMHO, ethics is very much about what techniques you use, what code you generate (accessibility for the visually impaired and ethics?) and a thousand other factors to boot. There are valid ethical reasons not cloak, and there are ethical view points in which cloaking is acceptable.

I'll leave you guessing as to what I believe