What Is Cloaking?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by razsports, Dec 19, 2005.

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  1. #1
    What is the true meaning of cloaking? Please explain :)

    Also, what is this talk about same font color as background?
     
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    razsports, Dec 19, 2005 IP
  2. tflight

    tflight Peon

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    #2
    I can't explain it better than wikipedia's definition of cloaking... but I'll try. Basically it means configuring your website to show different content to a search engine spider than to a "regular" website visitor.

    As to font color the same as the background.... People sometimes try to stuff keywords on pages using that technique.... Fortunately that stopped working years ago and search engines will actually ban your site if they find it.
     
    tflight, Dec 19, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
  3. Nitin M

    Nitin M White/Gray/Black Hat

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    #3
    Nitin M, Dec 19, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
    Smyrl likes this.
  4. Smyrl

    Smyrl Tomato Republic Staff

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    #4
    Hidden text is against Google's TOS.

    Shannon
     
    Smyrl, Dec 19, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
  5. Cybernaut

    Cybernaut Peon

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    #5
    As it is said, in terms of search engines, showing some content to SE and different one to users is cloaking.

    Same color as background, search engines can see but humans cant, so its also type of cloaking.

    Similarly, hiding links/text by "display:none" etc is also a type of cloaking.

    All of these is against google TOS. Hiddens links being used as backlinks to increase pagerank and hidden text as keywords to increase search rank etc.
     
    Cybernaut, Dec 19, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
  6. alanseo

    alanseo Peon

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    #6
    Does anybody try it successfully? I heard about "police bots". They visit site from another IP addresses then main bots and check sites for cloacking.
     
    alanseo, Dec 20, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
  7. kiddoz

    kiddoz Peon

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    #7

    what do you call those techniques? black hat or gray hat seo?
     
    kiddoz, Dec 21, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
  8. Paz

    Paz Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Or even better this search result:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=google+caught+cloaking ;)


    Cheers,
    Paz.
     
    Paz, Dec 21, 2005 Set Best Answer IP
  9. rrajan

    rrajan Peon

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    #9
    I think all SEs are getting wind of cloaking techniques now i would better not use the same.
     
    rrajan, Dec 21, 2005 Set Best Answer IP