As recently as last year, search engine representatives were unclear or did not
seem to care much about the search engine marketing application referred to as
cloaking, IP delivery or stealth scripts.
At one point, I remember thinking many people working at major search engines
must simply have no idea what cloaking is and how it works. If they had, they
wouldn't have waited so long to take action against it.
Cloaking is a search engine optimization strategy in which a web page URL has
several documents associated with it, one for each of the major search engines
and a different document for end users.
With cloaking, an individual search engine spider sees only the page tailored
to optimize rankings for that search engine.
Visitors entering a web site from search engine results see a page designed for
end users because these click-throughs are URL independent, that is, the link
from search engine results refers visitors to the URL of the site and not to the
page the search engine has cached, which is the page optimized for its indexing
process.
How Cloaking Works
Cloaking is a program installed on the web server that monitors URL requests.
These requests must contain the IP address of the requester so the web server
knows where to send the requested page.
By comparing the IP address of the requesting machine to a database of IP addresses
of search engine spiders, the cloaking program determines whether a visitor is
a search engine spider then decides which search engine spider it is.
The server sends the page designed for the spider it detects or the page designed
for end users if a search engine spider is not detected.
Pros
Cloaking allows you to tailor web pages for individual spiders and to score top
positions in multiple search engines using one URL.
It's difficult for a single page to rank well with all search engines because
each search engine uses a different algorithm to rank web pages.
Hiding HTML code from prying eyes is the main reason people give for using cloaking.
When sites achieve top search engine positions, competitors for the same keyword
analyze the pages to discover why. Cloaking can keep important optimization strategies
-- such as keyword frequency, keyword placement and word count -- hidden from
competitors.
Cons
Though cloaking can keep competitors from some of your search engine optimization
strategies, it can also be used to hide other things.
People can steal your site's content and hide it behind a stealth script. This
nasty form of theft, referred to as page jacking, was exposed last year in a publicized
event on Search Engine Watch.
But the major downside that may have you thinking twice about cloaking: Major
search engines are finally on to it.
On the I-Search
Discussion List, Marshall Simmonds, manager of Search Engine Relations at
About.com, posted conversations he had with representatives from AltaVista, Inktomi
and Northern Light. Sentiments expressed were simple and to the point: Web sites
that cloak will be permanently banned from their search engine databases.
Google states its policy in a FAQ.
It all sounds like deterrent language to me.
Do Right by Users
Many people reported in I-Search that they achieve better positioning if they
simply optimize normally and use techniques that are impossible with cloaked pages.
At several recent conferences, I've had the chance to speak frankly with search
engine representatives. They generally agree you should provide quality content
to your users and worry about spider-friendly design over positioning alone. This
is a long-term strategy that will survive any spam shakeout.
Detlev Johnson is vice president of technology at Position Technologies, an Inktomi partner and maker of
advanced search engine optimization (SEO) tools for webmasters and major online
agencies.
Acknowledged as one of the top five search engine optimization experts in the
world, he speaks and moderates search engine discussions at leading Internet conferences
worldwide. He moderates the popular I-Search Digest, a vital SEO resource.
