Alan_Perkins - 4:34 pm on Feb 5, 2003 (gmt 0)

Hi Danny

I just read your article, "Doorways Not Always Bad, At Inktomi". Very interesting!

As it relates to this thread, this line was relevant:

Inktomi now says Inktomi will be revising its guidelines about cloaking to add the concept of deception. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good answer about what "deceptive" means.

IMO it means that the part of the algo that thinks it is evaluating the content that searchers will see is deceived, because it is actually evaluating content that searchers will never see.

With XML feeds the algo isn't deceived, because the algo knows what it is dealing with. Nothing is cloaked from the search engine. So XML feeds are not cloaking.

With cloaking as I have always accepted it to mean, the content that searchers see is cloaked from search engines. That part of the algo that evaluates what searchers will see is deceived.

However, if Inktomi wants to say that trusted feeds ARE cloaking, that's up to them! ;)