jUST A QUICK QUESTION: When I look at MY SITE through any browser and have JavaScript defaulted to OFF, the site comes in different than when I look at it with JavaScript ON. Is this called "Cloaking"? Is this good or bad for Google? How can this be fixed? (I think it needs to be fixed, correct? Thanks in advance P.S. I see the same exact results when I look at the cached page...it looks different. Help Please.
Cloaking is when a different version of a website is shown to visitors and search engine spiders. Since the spiders can't execute javascript it is normal for websites to be slightly different with javascript on or off. So I don't think they would penalize every such website. Really the search engine spiders probably wouldn't know that your site is different with javascript enabled. Technically cloaking is a bad idea and it can get you penalized. I would think the search engines would only penalized a cloaked website when it has obviously been done to improve search engine rankings. They shouldn't penalize for small inconsequential differences. I glanced at your cached page and regular page and didn't notice anything different. What exactly changes with javascript on or off?
Whenever I use Javascript on a page, I also add a portion of code within <noscript> ... </noscript> tags, however I am careful to ensure that the noscript version is as close to the javascript as possible. For instance, if I use javascript to show a rotating set of images, the no script version will show the same images, but static. In this way, most visitors see the enhanced page, but the search engines still get the message.
No it won't be considered as cloaking, SE's can't read every JS code and that's why your website will look different once JS is turned off..