dannysullivan - 10:58 pm on Aug 26, 2002 (gmt 0)

Yes, the cite isn't from the most recent conference. However, as WebGuerrilla points out, it's still pretty much correct.

Google flat out does not allow cloaking. Do it, and if they catch you, you could find yourself thrown out. That doesn't mean they'll catch you, but they have the most unambiguous policy of any of the crawlers. Having said this, there are the odd rumors that they've allowed the occasional special case for a few selected web sites. I've not yet been able to confirm this.

The rest -- Inktomi, FAST, Ask Jeeves and AltaVista -- do allow cloaking. All of them. This is because they all have "trusted feed" programs where XML content can be fed directly into the search engine.

In an XML feed, you don't send the crawler a page. Instead, you send it something you can envision like a spreadsheet:

URL Title Meta Description Body
[page1.html...] Women's Shoes Best women's shoes on t... We have
[page2.html...] Men's Shoes Best men's shoes on the... We have
[page3.html...] Sport Shoes Best sport shoes on the... We have

Each page has different elements sent to the search engine that get stored in its index. Title tags, description tags, body copy, whatever is allowed, you can set up. The "real" page can be completely different -- indeed, it will be, because a real page would have a ton of surrounding HTML code.

Having said this, all the other crawlers will universally say that the content of the XML feed should be representative of the page the user will see. The page that says it is about women's shoes better be about women's shoes, and so on.

So XML cloaking is tolerated. After that, I think it is generally true that cloaking done by those in CPC-based paid inclusion programs get the next level of acceptance, then those in flat-fee paid inclusio programs a little less. Finally, those who are cloaking without paying any fee are most likely to find themselves pulled because cloaking was seen as a "spam" violation.

It's important to stress that the more the cloaked page deviates from the "real" page, the more likely you are to face problems -- and while paying gets you more tolerance, it is not a get out of jail free card to do whatever you want.

Overall, cloaking does not automatically equal spam (except at Google). Paid programs allow forms of search engine-approved cloaking. If in doubt, explain why you need to employ cloaking and get clarification from the company selling you inclusion. If you have a good reason, you'll probably be able to do it.