Alan_Perkins - 11:32 pm on Feb 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

Alan, trying to divorce the word "cloaking" from the actual technology is going to confuse a lot of people

The word IS divorced from the technology, and that is why people who don't think it is are confused! ;)

The technology we are talking about is content delivery. My understanding of the word "cloaking" is using content-delivery technology to deliver unsolicited unique content to search engines. Most search engines don't like this, for the reasons I mentioned above. Google and Inktomi clearly state on their sites "Don't cloak". Their understanding of the word seems to match mine, at least from what they publish. :)

Nobody who isn't an SEO (or at least hasn't been exposed to SEO influences) even uses the word "cloaking". Try searching www.w3.org for the word, for example. The word is only used within our little industry on the Web. Ask Tim Berners Lee what he thinks of cloaking, and he's likely to say "What's that? Klingon technology?" But he understands all about content delivery...