What Is Search Engine Cloaking?

Date First Published: 24th August 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 6/10

Learn more about what search engine cloaking is in this article.

In SEO terms, cloaking is a black hat SEO technique that involves presenting different content to search engines than human users in order to manipulate the ranking of a page for certain keywords in the SERP page. This is often accomplished by providing different content based on the IP address or the user-agent HTTP header of the user requesting a page.

For example, a page may have something that specifically checks for a user agent of a search engine bot, such as Googlebot or the bot's IP address to show different content to the bot than the users. When they are identified, a different version of the webpage may be delivered, often one that is not present on the visible page. The web server will then return a certain page, such as how to install a software application to the search engine bot, but when a user comes to visit the page, the web server may return something completely different, such as a phishing page or a pornographic website. This gives a poor user experience and deceives both the search engines and users as it can take the searcher to a different website than they expected by disguising the true content of those websites.

Note:

Sometimes, if a website gets hacked, the hacker might use cloaking to make the website harder for the owner to detect.

Does Cloaking Result In Penalisation?

Cloaking is against Google Webmaster Guidelines and can result in websites getting penalised. As a result, they will appear lower in the index or even be completely removed. It is definitely a black hat SEO technique as it involves someone doing something deceptive or misleading. There is no such thing as white hat cloaking. Any website that includes code that differentiates the Googlebot in regard to user agent or IP address would be considered as cloaking by Google and may result in penalisation.

Difference Between Cloaking and Personalisation

Personalisation is different from cloaking. Personalisation refers to showing personalised content to users based on geographical location, such as personalised product recommendations and automatically translating content in their language. For example, if a user from Germany visited a website, it is helpful if the content was automatically personalised and translated to German or redirected to the German version of their website. Geolocation, which is looking at the IP address and reacting to that to show personalised is fine, but as long as a website is not specifically reacting to the IP address of just search engine bots, such as Googlebot, it is not considered cloaking. Personalisation aims to improve user experience, whilst cloaking aims to only present different content to search engine bots in order to manipulate the search engine rankings and deceive other people.

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