jk321 - 2:19 pm on Nov 16, 2000 (gmt 0)

Mikkel_Svendsen,
<<...It would be if it was the SE taking money to rank pages
better without telling anyone...>>

Actually, I was only referring to the "temptation" offered to spammers by cloaking being similar to that offered by bribery. People with low/no ethical guidance always seem to find a way to take the "good" from society and use it for their own "not-so-good" purposes, which usually requires a crack-down on all parties, whether ethical or not. Example: One morally-challenged airline pilot gets caught using drugs, and now ALL airline pilots will be required to take random drug tests until the end of time, even though the "positive" rate is barely measurable. All have to suffer because of one dufus.

It just seems to me that society is always punishing the vast ethical majority for the sins of the unethical few.

<<... And once agin I must emphazise that cloaking is NOT what gives you good ranking - good content, high linkpopularity and well writen HTML is still what will do that for you - cloaking just help you taget and protect your work. >>

This seems to be the heart of the issue. As long as SEO's view cloaking in this light, there is no problem. But there always seems to be that 1% out there that tries to use good things for bad purposes.

Yes/No?

redzone,
<<...the majority of spammers don't even try and hide "stolen pages">>

Just so I'll know, do you feel the majority of cloakers are doing so for higher rankings, or to protect code? I, personally have no idea.

Thanks,
JK321