Hi, I know cloaking is black hat but have a few questions how to make it white hat if it is necessary for the function of a site. I have a new site with a script to make the URL shorter for web site owners that for example cannot afford a domain etc. URL: http://OV2.net This site is using a frameset with rows="100%,*" in order to cloak the real URL, will that be raising the red flag by the SEs? If yes, what could happen and how come there are so many others like go.to/site etc? And if I keep a link or two in the noframes tag, how would that be treated? Thanks.
To make a short URL. For example ov2.net/name, mostly for newbies etc that has a very long URL to their site. I would be happy if someone made an attempt to answer the questions in my post.
Read your post Jim but I don' know if your use of the word "cloak" is standard... or maybe you are using it in the standard way but I'm not understanding what your site does. Cloaking usually refers to showing different content to different users. In the blackhat world you typically segment users as search engine bots vs. real humans. The bots see one thing while the humans see something totally different. Is this what you're doing? I haven't tried your site but it seems like you are just making a new url for someone's website and then not showing the human user that comes to your short URL, the full URL of the page you are displaying in a frame ... is that the general gist of it? If I have it right you certainly have no cloacking issues. You don't even have a duplicate content issue because the content really is coming only from the original long url of the site. If you are making a behind the scenes http request to get the original long URL then display the resulting page on your short URL .. then you might run into a duplicate issue .. but still not a cloaking issue. Doesn't seem like this is the case though, so I can't see any problems with your approach.
Hi Nitin, thank you for the answer. Perhaps I am using the word cloak wrongly. You are right, the only thing the site does is to make a frame page for the long URL in a short URL. I am happy that this is not an issue about cloaking. I wrote this "And if I keep a link or two in the noframes tag, how would that be treated?" On the noframes tag I have first a link to the long URL and the description of the site and then I have a sentence with a couple of links to my own sites. I am happy if there is no problem with that. One WMW member that is a friend of mine wrote to me "That is black hat!" and I got a bit scared and wanted it to be cleared here on DP.