Air - 2:38 am on Oct 30, 2000 (gmt 0)

Mikkel,

I have been hearing those arguments for a long time, I would not dismiss them outright, but consider that each of those statements is bourne out of equating cloaking with spam as though they were joined at the hip.

Cloaking is first and foremost a delivery mechanism, nothing more, unless that separation is made, those arguements will always be stumbling blocks to an open discussion that leads to SE's being able to index a wider range of relevant content, and publishers of that content being able to offer it for indexing.

The "mee too" arguement of those wishing to use invisible text for this purpose is irrelevant, it is a separate arguement, and raises considerations that must be contemplated by the SE's which are entirely different than cloaking.

The issue of page theft raises an entirely different set of questions. How do we stop it? , How are pages stolen in the first place? Can stolen pages be submitted to Search Engines? If cloaking was entirely wiped off the face of the earth, would page theft increase or decrease?

The last point is one that I think exists only because the myth persists that cloaking hides something from the search engines. This leads many to believe that the webmaster is free to spam at will with impunity while cloaking. The reality is that the "cloaked" page submitted to the search engine carries no disguise, it is the same page that would be submitted regardless of the delivery mechanism. It is subject to the same spam filters and the same algorithm that every other page is. If invisible text gets you banned, then delivering invisible text to the search engine via cloaking will too. If too many repetitions of keywords carries a penalty, then delivering too many keywords via cloaking is penalized too.

It isn't my intention to refute each argument that is raised against cloaking. I do so above only to ensure that what looks to be a promising and exciting dialogue with the Search Engines is not thwarted. It is unheard of to engage in this type of dialogue with the search engines. Let's forget for a moment that it is about cloaking, instead let's use it as a precedent that will later create a forum to address some of the other concerns that have been raised and IMO unnecessarily tied to cloaking.

Who knows, in the end the search engines may decide that cloaking should in fact be eradicated from the face of the earth. But wouldn't it be great to have reached that position through a collaboration of the SEO community and the Search Engines?