Are they the same? I know what cloaking is but is doorway pages another name for cloaking? Whats the difference?
Cloaking is showing a search engine one page, and an actual viewer another page. Many cloaking sites keep a database of known IP addresses of the engines so when the engine spider hits the site they will be shown a specific page. Yet when any other IP address hits the domain, they will be shown a totally different site. Doorway pages are generated/made that is full of crap content for the SE's that will direct the viewer somewhere else when clicked on. A lot of times you will find a lot of domain names that have just one page (doorway page) that will direct the viewer to the main site.
so they are pretty much the same thing ... ? both redirect users to a totally different page/home page.
No they are not the same thing. A doorway page is a page that is used to try and fool the SE's to rank for certain keywords and phrases. When the viewer clicks on the SERP result, the doorway page will show up and from there they can click on any links or just close the page out. Cloaking is a "method", not a page or even a site. All cloaking is used for is to show certain content to certain viewers. Most cases cloaking is used to show the bots one page, usually to boost ranking for keywords. Then show a visitor a totally different page. The pages that are shown to the bots are normally doorway pages to boost ranking for whatever keyword/phrase. The New York Times uses cloaking to show Google and other SE's there article content. Yet when we click on that same link, it shows us a page to sign up and pay to view the article. Great example of legit cloaking that you can get away with. Cloaking your doorway pages is a great way to get yourself banned. End result is they are not the same thing, cloaking is a method and doorway pages are simply pages created for whatever reason you wish to use them for.
here's the difference: Doorway Page Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. ex. of doorway page cLICK This link Cloaking - The hiding of page content. Involves providing one page for a search engine or directory and a different page for other user agents at the same URL. Legitimate method for stopping page thieves from stealing optimized pages, but frowned upon by some search engines resulting in penalties. At the same URL (web address) showing one page to a search engine spider and a different page to a human visitor. Example: if you put on the address bar the site www.yahoo.com and the output page becomes The Google page..That is cloaking.(example only )
I see .... so the link you posted for tamba.co.uk/web-design-and-development/web-design-uk.htm Is this breaking the rules?