Cloaking FAQS — Page 2
What are the mechanics of cloaking?A: First, let's have a look at the following diagram:
================================================
access|control|action| target file
------------------------------------------------
spider gets <-- cloaked page
\ /
SWITCH
/ \
human forwards to --> normal page
================================================
As you can see, search engine spiders and human visitors are treated differently when accessing a cloaked web site: while the search engine will be fed an optimized cloaked (or “phantom”) page, the human visitor will be redirected to a normal, human readable page.
This is effected by the SWITCH — a cgi program whose primary task it is to determine which type of visitor is accessing the site and to treat them accordingly. Note that the Switch will masquerade as an ordinary .html or .htm file, i.e. it will sport that extension, whereas in truth it is a cgi or Perl script hiding behind this file format. The reason for this is that search engines will not commonly accept submissions for files bearing a .cgi or .pl extension.
While the file name of the Switch (termed “keyword switch” for reasons to be outlined now) may well be “index.htm” or “index.html”, you will attain to greater flexibility by creating several files named “keyword1.htm”, “keyword2.htm”, “keyword3.htm” etc. respectively.
These would then be submitted to the search engines as URL “http://yourdomain.com/keyword1.htm”, etc. This is what one might term the “one switch per keyword” (1SPK) approach as used, for example, by our own fantomas shadowSniper™.
To understand the precise mechanics of this procedure, please bear in mind that keyword switches and cloaked or phantom pages will normally come in tandem: i.e. the switch file “keyword1.htm” will read the optimized phantom page “keyword1.html” (note the different file extensions!) to the spider, whereas the human visitor will be redirected to, say, “section1.html” which itself may or may not be related to the keyword in question. (Obviously, if it is not, this qualifies for spamming and may easily get you banned from search engine submission, which is why we can only advise against it.)
To illustrate this process, here's another diagram:
===================================================
target |control|action| served file
---------------------------------------------------
spider is fed <-- keyword.html
/
keyword.htm - SWITCH
\
human gets
redirected to --> section.html
====================================================
There are another, fundamentally different approaches in which the Switch will, for example, redirect both the search engine spider and the human visitor to different pages each. Alternatively, both spiders and humans might be fed with relevant pages without being redirected. Finally, some cloaking programs will differentiate between different spiders and feed them individually optimized pages, e.g. one phantom page to the AltaVista spider, another phantom page to the Excite spider, etc. This can be termed the “one switch for all” (1S4A) approach.
All these different cloaking philosophies have their advantages and their drawbacks. Whereas the 1SPK approach outlined above is extremely flexible as it allows for unlimited finetuning, it does tend to blow up the number of files on your server considerably. As keyword switches and cloaked pages always come in tandem, optimizing your web site for, say, 50 keywords will imply generating a minimum of 100 pages (50 keyword switches + 50 phantom pages), possibly even 150, if you redirect human visitors to a different page for every keyword, though this will usually not be the case. E.g. you might optimize your site for keywords “widget”, “prime widgets” and “cheap widgets” search engine wise, whereas it might suffice to redirect all human visitors to one single “widget.html” page.
While storage space isn't such a serious problem anymore these days, the more so as a good switch file shouldn't be longer than appr. 2K. However, the administrative overhead can obviously be daunting.
The 1S4A approach reduces the number of keyword switches to just one, which may seem a lot more attractive because the administrative overhead induced should be less. However, there are some trade offs to be considered as well: a keyword switch catering to all site visitors will usually be significantly more voluminous and, hence, slower to load than the lean and mean 1SPK scripts. Moreover, if you want to retain high flexibility, you will have to use a program which allows for assignment of different phantom pages to various search engines — thereby hardly reducing administrative tasks at all.
What's a keyword switch?A: A program that will determine whether a site visitor is a search engine spider or a human, to feed them accordingly with specially prepared web pages. For more info, see question above.
Isn't this really just a simple redirection technique?A: With badly programmed cloaking software, possibly. Note, however, that if you read the first question and answer on this page that it's actually more complicated than that, if you are looking at a professional solution. Since search engine spiders can easily detect redirections, it is paramount to cloak it. The best way to do this is for the cloaking software not to redirect the spider at all but, rather, feed it with content read from another file. Here, only the human visitor will be diverted or redirected to another page than the one the spider gets to see. As this is worked in the background, the process will remain undetectable for the human web site visitor.
What about penalization?A: Myths and rumors abound on this issue, and five experts will probably give you six opinions …
Well, here is ours: DON'T PANIC! If individual consultants (and sometimes even whole corporations — especially those featuring products like doorway generators etc. which truly sophisticated cloaking technology will effectively render superfluous …) are having their field day scaring the newbies, more often than not even believing devoutly in their own phantastic horror scenarios, this should be no reason for you to join the fray!
So can cloaking get you banned from the search engines' indices? The straight answer to that one is: Yes — but …!
Fact is, most cloakers are achieving very good rankings and very many of these are really quite sticky as far as search engines and their volatile databases go. If you are working in a very competitive industry (e.g. adult web sites, real estate, and others), chances are you won't ever rank in any major SE's Top10 league unless you are using state of the art stealth tech.
This is not to say cloaking isn't without its risks. While hysteria is never the best of advisors, trivializing the matter and ignoring the real stakes involved will obviously do you no good either.
One would have thought that the final answer should rest with the search engines: after all, it's their own turf. Unfortunately, their public statements and declarations are, contrary to what one might expect, no great help. Quite the contrary in fact: most SE officials will tell you that they regard cloaking (ANY form of cloaking, mind you!) as “spam”. Some spinmasters will even claim that they are actively eliminating it. In a few cases they will attempt to create some mystique around what they are doing (“Very effective technology to counter cloaking in our possession … not authorized to tell you more … blah blah.”) However, even supposing it's true, it certainly doesn't show in their search results!
So can you really get banned for cloaking?
Categorically yes — if, for example, your competitors have snitched on you to the search engines, and if the SEs' staff have manually checked and compared your spider fodder with what you are actually serving your human visitors. It can happen, too, if you overdo your submissions or if there are significant changes in your historical submission patterns. E.g. if your site used to submit say 3-5 pages a month over a certain period of time, only to start submitting hundreds of pages per week all of a sudden, you may indeed be inviting trouble: in a worst case scenario a human editor may come along to check the matter out.
The results of these checkups may get your site penalized (i.e. your pages will be given a less than optimal ranking), or it may get you banned from the search engine's index altogether, either for a limited time or even forever.
So you probably wouldn't want to run the risks involved when catering to a high profile site focusing strongly on branding and sporting a nifty, easy to remember domain name to go with it, the loss of which could seriously damage image and turnover.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that you will get penalized or banned with more than one search engine at a time. Bad enough as this may be, you could always recur to setting up additional “transit” domains full of doorways and phantom pages from where your human visitors would be redirected to your site proper.
Note that we do NOT condone cloaking for misleading (“spamming”) purposes: it is counter productive and will only serve to make life more difficult for all parties concerned. If a user tries to search for relevant information links and your site floods the results pages #1 through #40, chances are you won't need any hard hitting competitors to get reported!
Finally, to disperse all doubts in this matter: while cloaking is a highly efficient and effective technique, it will do you little good if you don't have the content to match. After all, surfers will always be free to vote with their feet (well, mice, really …), and if you are trying to insult their intelligence by subterfuge, don't pretend to surprise if they resort to returning the favor with a vengeance.
- What are Ghost Pages?
- What are Doorway Pages, then?
- And Hallway Pages?
- How are cloaked pages submitted?
- How about changing stealth pages?
- What are the mechanics of cloaking?
- What's a keyword switch?
- Isn't this really just a simple redirection technique?
- What about penalization?
- What is keyword density?
- How can I cloak themes?
- How do I cloak meta tags?
- Could you show me an actual real life example of cloaking?
- Do you have a tutorial showing how to generate stealth or phantom pages?
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