digitalghost - 11:57 pm on Feb 2, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>Can UA delivery be used to "spam" them, I guess is what I'm asking

UA delivery can and often is used to cloak a site and Google considers this a violation of their TOS.

>>if these pages are getting mistakenly booted

It's not that they are being mistaken, it is that Google wasn't making the distinction between UA delivery and what Google sees as any other form of cloaking. If you use UA delivery Google can and often has deemed that a violation.

>>Can UA delivery be used to "spam" them, I guess is what I'm asking

Yes. UA delivery can be used to spam them, serve different content, etc,
just not as effectively as a combination of UA and IP delivery.

The majority of people getting booted for UA delivery are getting tossed due to hand checks. Here's where the resource factor comes into play. If a person points out that a different UA string serves up different content for say, just the index page, and a hand check confirms this those Google reps aren't going to scour the entire site to determine intent or to see how many pages are using UA delivery. They're going to flag it and/or dump it.

Here's the crux of the matter:

Can UA delivery be used to "spam" them, I guess is what I'm asking

The answer is yes and I think everyone is in agreement that the engines simply don't have the resources to check for the intent of the UA delivery on millions of sites.

So if you want to steer clear of any risk of getting a site tossed for what most of us call cloaking, then stay away from UA and IP delivery. Google didn't make a distinction between UA and IP delivery in regard to cloaking. Read into that what you will.

We're also left with what the engines say versus what they actually mean. I don't look for any engine to clear things up for SEOs, obfuscation better serves their purpose, or at least the people running the show seems to think so. ;)