Cloaking - still save?

Is it risky to use cloaking-techn. as a professional SEO

[Lello]

Hello,
I am german SEO and sitepromoter. I am quite new to cloaking - not to SEO in general. I have two reasons to use cloaking techn.:

Fst:
- a webpage on a high webdesign level can never reach a good ranking, IMHO. Already the use of <h1> </h1> is an absolute DON'T in my company.

Thanx to you SEs! <I' am dreaming of the day that a spider can SEE with human eyes and distinguish between low level stuff <****,to speak it out> and high quality websites.

Dream on Lello! *gg*

2nd:
- we have customers running complex and db-based websites. sometimes with a wide range of relevant keywords. it is impossible to achieve good rankings unless you use cloaking techn.. the silliest thing is that some SEs do not even index our dynamic-generated webpages since we use our own techn. comparable to php4 which has its own extension that is not known by SEs so they refuse to index pages with that extension. nice!!

Ergo: I am dealing with cloaking-techn. for - as we can say - "moral" reasons. Protecting your source-code from thiefs is not that actual in Germany by now - in my experience - but it could become so!! Here another reason to use cloaking techn.

Now I am afraid that SEs may detect and pennalize our sites for cloaking.

Any experiences with that matter?
- concerning Google
- concerning German SEs <fireball,abacho,german subdivisions of major SEs>
- Has anyone of you ever heard of SEs trying to stealth their spiders themselves?

Thank you a lot in advance

Cheers from GE

Lello

[rencke]

Herzlich willkommen zu WebmasterWorld, Lello.

I and my fellow moderators hope that you will like this place. It is like a "University of Search Engine Optimization and Webmaster Techniques", with an enormous amount to read - at present more than 25.000 posts.

I don't know the answer to your questions - my learned collegues will be around shortly with that - but just wanted to welcome you and to point out that there is a lively discussion on German search engines going on in the European forum, where we are trying to gather as many facts as possible about European search engines and directories. Feel free to drop in at any time.

[Lello]

rencke: was für ein netter Empfang!!

Vielen Dank! :-)

[JuniorHarris]

Was sagte er? :)

Now I am afraid that SEs may detect and pennalize our sites for cloaking.

I'm curious to an answer for this question as well, though I'm mostly interested in regards to US engines.

Has or does anybody know of any penalties imposed by search engines for cloaking?

[Lello]

Was sagte er? :)

JuniorHarris: I said what a nice welcome.

:)

[littleman]

Let me point you to Air's July 1 post at [webmasterworld.com...]
His advice there is excellent.

[JuniorHarris]

Lello, übersetzte ich den Text mit Babel [world.altavista.com]. Sie haben nett ein Willkommen hier!

Thanks for the link littleman, that was a very good read. It gave me some reassurance, as I believe I am following all guidelines!~:)

[rencke]

LOL! I am glad Babelfish wasn't around to tempt me into machine translations when I was in school or I wouldn't have passed in German. JuniorHarris: if you like to toy with Babelfish, I have something great for you. Check out the Russian thread in the European forum and read the instructions towards the end there on how to surf a Russian SEO-forum with Babelfish. It does work! Great fun.

Littleman: I should have known about Air's post, and didn't. Will do better next time. (Hanging head in shame.)

[JuniorHarris]

rencke thanks for the tip. I went over there and followed the instructions. Way too neat!~:)