A badly cloaked doorway example.

[Brett_Tabke]

If you ever wanted an example of how not to do cloaking, look here [wallpaper-4u.com]. Then walk back to the root. However, that page is ranked in the top 100 under many related keywords on Fast.

[Air]

The title on his cloaked page is too funny - lol

[Brett_Tabke]

Look at the alt tags to see who's handy work that is...

[NFFC]

And a search on the alt tag at Google produces this. [google.com]:)

Added And I never noticed this before:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 69 already displayed.
If you would like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included"

[oilman]

I've come across these monkeys before as well - got a good laugh then and had another now.

That particular page is obviously for lycos - you can keep changing the last bit just before the .html and see all the different ways they changed it up for the different SEs (av, hb, and ink all have pages as well)

What's with all the hyphenation in the key words though?

[Air]

Just had a look at the alt tags - can't say I'm surprised.

You know what's funny though, think of all the posts you've all seen where people say they can't get indexed, or they are concerned about having 5 repetitions of a keyword then go look at that page again ...

[jaz]

Are these guys actually cloaking by identifying ip address and delivering a unique page upfront or just using links on another page to point to all of their optimized files. Then using the robots.txt file to allow each engine to see only the page that its supposed to?

Has anyone used the robot.txt file in this way?

[oilman]

I would assume that they are using some type of IP/UA cloaking. Robots.txt is just too unreliable - too many spiders simply ignore it entirely.

[Brett_Tabke]

Tell you the truth, I think it is just a broken system, or they really aren't cloaking at all. Why you'd put up doorway pages like that and not cloak them...

[Air]

Here's another bad example -

but you've got to be fast on the "stop" button, just hit refresh then quickly hit stop. Don't know what kind of cloaking system this is but not good.

[paint.tierranet.com ]

[PeteU]

Air, its just a simple doorway with some hidden text, no cloaking there, and no redirect .. or am I missing something?

[Air]

I think you're missing something Pete. There are two pages, but you've got to be quick on the draw with the stop button.

I couldn't post the URL to the two pages 'cause it's the same for both. :)

[added] ok now you're making me think, I see one page with a black background and white text and no graphics when quick on the stop button, and then I see the doorway with the same gibberish but as hidden text if I just let the page load. Is that what you saw?[/added]

[PeteU]

Air, its an old trick, a page with black background and white text using a small white gif as background image thus covering all white text. No wonder you couldn't stop it, heh, its just the background image loading delay ;)

[Air]

yeah, that's why I added the second part, you got me thinking about it. Usually with that trick you can't see it happening, thought I had found a really badly cloaked one - but alas you are right :)

[NFFC]

Downloaded a little program that allows me to change the UA in IE. Changed it and went here [statewidecars.8l.com] and found a cloaked domain.

Are these guys amateurs or was I just lucky.

[Air]

NFFC,

go have a look now ...

[NFFC]

Sorry Air can't see any difference, but I am a bit thick!

[Air]

oh, when I went to have a look it 404'd, so I assumed they took it down.

[Q]

Definitely cloaking. Amateurs?--Not neccesarily, definitely careless though--it looks to me like they are using a combination-serving some pages by IP and some by User agent.

[jaz]

NFFC,

Where did you get the software to change your user agent??

[WebGuerrilla]

Here is a link to a program that will allow you to change your User Agent [filemine.com ]

[Brett_Tabke]

Hey WG, thanks for dialing us up.

Agent names can also be changed with many banner busters like Junkbusters or Webwasher.