The cost of cloaking

Stunned by quote

[glengara]

Chatting to an SEO recently, I asked what their company charges for cloaking, and was stunned at the price mentioned.

They use commercial IP delivery software, so as far as I know all that's left for them to do is to come up with an SE friendly "alternate" page.

IMO a page that's optimized for say Google will, with minor tweaks, work well with most other SEs, so there can't be that much work involved in this aspect.

The price mentioned was $800-900 for the first two pages, and $600 per page after that.

This is a small pond, and they're big fish, but if this is a reasonable price in the US or UK, I may consider ditching my doubts about cloaking.

Am I missing some important aspect in what's involved, or are these guys making hay?

[john316]

<<Am I missing some important aspect in what's involved, or are these guys making hay? <<

It sounds like they are making money :).

[Macguru]

Well, it depends on many factors. How long last the contract? How often will they update? Is hosting included? How frequently do they update the IP lists? What is the server platform?

It seems to be a lot of money for only one version of "alternate" page.

[Brett_Tabke]

Like Mac said, it depends on what is included in that price. Is that install, support, and content creation - or is that install and forget?

I'd think if you even had rudimentary script install knowledge you could purchase a script and do your whole site for a whole lot less. It's not all that difficult and most of the firms that sell cloaking software support thier sites with ip addresses and general support.

[glengara]

Didn't get all the details from him, had to sit down for a while.
I suspect the cloaking part is an add-on to their "regular "package, and that they do update regularly .

[bufferzone]

It is my understanding that some of the big players are using cloacking with the knowledge and acceptance of the SE's. They seems to let it pass as long as you only cloak "ethicaly" (what ever that might be).
I guess the SE's feel that as long as they know who is doing it, they can controle it to some ekstent. And the SEO's know that as long as they stay in line, they will not be banned. Sort of an "if you cant beat them..." approach

[glengara]

Can anyone point me to a good tutorial on the nitty-gritty involved in setting up a cloaking script?

Preferably one aimed at the layman/DIYer; I've looked at a couple of howtos from the software providers, but they assume a level of knowledge I don't have....yet.