Cloaking Revisited Options

An interesting post from Brett Tabke in his forum is drawing attention, while at the same time, so is an article with another viewpoint that Jill Whalen provided in a recent guest article in her newsletter.

To bring yourselves up to date on what cloaking is or isn't, these are worth reading...


Why Cloaking Is Always A Bad Idea

http://www.highrankings.com/issue041.htm

Cloaking Gone Mainstream

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum24/411.htm

Kim

The problem with the Alan Perkins article is that it doesn't try to discuss cloaking in an unbiased and objective way. It tries to define cloaking, and it does it in a very biased way. But it's not surprising because Alan Perkins is the person who wrote an article that unsuccessfully tried to define search engine spam. In other words, he is a person with strong opinions, and his article reflects and supports his own very biased opinions. I suppose it's really an attempt to justify the sort of cloaking that search engines accept, by claiming that it isn't really cloaking at all. That view flies in the face of what cloaking has always been - providing different content to different requestors.

On the other hand, the WMW thread contains various views and opinions as to what is and isn't cloaking, and is a much better read.

Phil.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm undecided about cloaking. Two years ago I was dead set against it when used to manipulate search engine results. Nowadays I'm getting more and more email from companies desperate to compete in competitive subjects and don't stand a chance in hell with basic content driven, or keyword driven SEO techniques.

I'm in a quandry lately on exactly what these companies are supposed to do other than blow a ton of money on branding and high-end advertising. This wouldn't work for our friend Ed, whom you and I are both helping out, because his field is aimed at engineers only, not mainstream users. He doesn't need a brand. His users know exactly what they're looking for but unfortunately some of the terms his site covers can be confused with other definitions for the same word. So, keywords are a struggle for words that have more than one meaning or definition.

I like articles like Alan's because warnings of risks are good. I also like Brett and company's remarks and opinons because if I find myself in a situation where I have no answers for someone, I want to be able to point them to alternatives. Everyone has to decide what route to take based on the objectives for their company and website.

Kim

But it's not surprising because Alan Perkins is the person who wrote an article that unsuccessfully tried to define search engine spam. In other words, he is a person with strong opinions, and his article reflects and supports his own very biased opinions.

I'm not going to debate the subject here because I'm already debating it on two other forums. However, since Phil wants to try to disparage Alan Perkins, I feel I must at least say something in his defense.

I know a lot of people in the SEO world. Some who I've met in real life, and some who I've only had online discussions with. There are only a handful of these people who have my utmost respect because of their sheer intelligence, knowledge and integrity. My very short list includes people like our own Ammon Johns, along with Barry Lloyd and Danny Sullivan. Alan is also included in that list, and regardless of whether you agree with his definition of cloaking, his thoughts and perspective on things regarding search engines and SEO are always worth listening to and thinking about because they don't get written lightly.

Kim wrote:

I like articles like Alan's because warnings of risks are good.

Actually, I don't believe Alan's article warned about the risks at all. It was simply an article to clear up the confusion regarding what cloaking is and what it isn't. If as a group we were always talking about the same thing when we used a certain word, it would make for a lot less arguments.

The article was not about what is spam and what is not spam. It was just an article to define cloaking. Sending different stuff to people in different parts of the country is not cloaking. Sending different stuff to a handheld PDA than you'd send to a PC is not cloaking. Sending a Flash movie to most users, but all text to others is not cloaking.

It's all really very simple. Why some people would rather lump the above technologies which all have great uses with the one thing that only is used to show the search engines one thing and the users another, i.e., cloaking, is beyond me.

Jill

By the way, Kim, what about cloaking would help a company get higher rankings than what they could do without cloaking? Cloaking in and of itself is not going to produce any high rankings. Anything you could do with cloaking, you should be able to do without it, by doing all the things you discuss in your usability reports.

Jill

However, since Phil wants to try to disparage Alan Perkins...

I merely pointed out that the Alan Perkins article was written by a person who has a very big bias about cloaking, and it puts forward views that are designed to support his bias, plus he attempts to change the meaning of the word "cloaking" to suit his own bias. Therefore, it isn't a balanced piece of writing. The WMW thread isn't a piece of writing as such, but it does contain various views and opinions and is, therefore, a better read.

... what about cloaking would help a company get higher rankings than what they could do without cloaking?

How about the cloaking (IP delivery) in this forum? Without it, we simply wouldn't get most of the rankings that we have.

Phil.

How about the cloaking (IP delivery) in this forum? Without it, we simply wouldn't get most of the rankings that we have.

By that do you mean you are watching for the bots IPs and sending them one thing and sending everyone else something else? In other words, you are cloaking as Alan defined it? (I really don't know enough about the different technologies yet to know what you mean for sure.)

Because if that's what you're doing, I would be very concerned if you or Kim or anyone cares about this site remaining in the search engines.

I'm hoping that by cloaking you are talking about one of the other forms (that really aren't cloaking).

Jill

The forum spots Googlebot's IPs and ensures that it gets a certain type of page, which is slightly different to the pages that most users get. But you know about it, Jill. I'm not concerned with how Alan described it. It's cloaking, pure and simple.

You asked the question, "what about cloaking would help a company get higher rankings than what they could do without cloaking?". I provided this forum as an example of rankings that are achieved because of cloaking, that would otherwise not be achieved.

Phil.

Anything you could do with cloaking, you should be able to do without it, by doing all the things you discuss in your usability reports.

Certainly so! But, they'd have to "get" that usability is vital. There's still a long way to go in that respect, both in large and small companies.

I also only see the front-end when I review/test sites. Dynamically generated pages that are sent to engines only (doorway systems) are pages I never see.

In the case of different definitions for keywords, again, copywriting would help, and how they word things like Google Ads. Simply buying a keyword invites mis-fires, but even a well written page can sway someone to click on it even if they didn't come to the page purposefully.

I do want to keep my mind open to all possible options for any client. In some cases they're simply not interested in usability help, or how that can help with SEO efforts. It's frustrating for me when I get these clients, but when I do, I have resources and people to send them to. Then, it's "Use At Your Own Risk"

Kim

The forum spots Googlebot's IPs and ensures that it gets a certain type of page..

Sorry for stating the obvious, but isnt this against G's TOS and likely to result in a penalty?

As our forum Tech Admin, Phil doesn't do much without checking with us (other assigned Admins') first. I forwarded you (and him) what I think is his plan. It sounds less scary when you read it but I agree, we need to understand what's being done.

Phil's been working hard to make the forum perform well in Google. We just need to understand the processes and risks, if there's any at all.

Kim

If I remember correctly, what he was going to do was not cloaking. Unless he forgot to mention the part about IP cloaking in his emails.

It boggles my mind that people don't want to accept Alan's very, very simple definition of cloaking. It would solve a lot of problems and arguments. I'm not sure why people would prefer to hold on to calling all those other things cloaking. It could be to throw up a smokescreen so they can say, "Google cloaks, why can't we"? But I don't think that's the whole reason. I guess a lot of it is people don't like someone coming in and trying to define something for them...even if the definition makes perfect sense!

Jill

The cloaking that we have here is that Googlebot gets the identical pages that users get when they have cookies turned on. Googlebot arrives without the ability to accept cookies (cookies off) and so it is recognised by its IPs and given pages as though it has cookies turned on. It is IP delivery, and that's cloaking.

The way it came about is that I discovered that Googlebot doesn't spider urls that have anything that looks like a session ID in them, otherwise they would be spidering a potentailly infinite number of urls. I found a modification for the forum that takes care of the problem. It ensures that Googlebot get pages with the session IDs left out of the urls (links) - identical pages to what those of us with cookies turned on get, but different to what people with cookies turned off get.

So I emailed Google, explaining the situation and asking if they have anything against the solution. I got the auto-response, but I've heard nothing since. After a while, I decided that they aren't going to respond, so I installed the modification. The result is that both Google and us get want we want - all the pages spidered and, because of IP delivery cloaking, we get rankings that we wouldn't otherwise have got.

It boggles my mind that people don't want to accept Alan's very, very simple definition of cloaking. It would solve a lot of problems and arguments.

I think the reason is that cloaking has been around for a long time, and everyone understood what was meant by it. But because the engines do even more cloaking than they used to, Alan has decided to narrow the definition of the word so that what the engines do isn't really cloaking. He can't do that. The number of people who support his views are such a small number that his definitions simply aren't going to take off - except amongst that small number.

Phil.

So Phil, do you just have it set for "googlebot" to see the other pages, or do you have to go to a database and download all possible Googlebot IP addresses, and keep up on it all the time.

I really don't know much about this, but the one the engines don't like is the latter. (Not sure what, if anything, is the difference, but that's my understanding.)

ok, so who can fanagle their way into the heart of someone at Google so we can get a definitive answer and not a darned form letter?

It only recognises Googlebot and it sees all the current main and fresh crawler IPs. If Googlebot changes IP addresses I would need to update the changes.

It isn't necessary for the other main engines because they spider urls with session IDs in them, but I can set it for whatever spiders it's necessary for.

Well I'm not up with the technical stuff so have no idea wheter what we're doing is ok or not. Let's just not get a Google ban. Not a good look for a SEO related forum. :roll:

What happened was:- we asked Google, they didn't bother to respond, we (I) did what nobody could find fault with, so I suggest just leaving it alone.

It is cloaking but it isn't spam, and there is no way in the world that Google would find any fault with it. I find a number of faults with Google, but even I don't believe they would penalise a site for this cloaking. If they did, I'd create a bit of a stink around the forums.