Poor Man's Meta Cloaking?

[stcrim]

Does anyone know if it is safe to protect one's code with meta cloaking?
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<!--# if expr="\"$HTTP_USER_AGENT\"!= /MozillaŠMSIEŠOperaŠLynxŠWebTVŠNCSA Mosaic/" -->

Tags and content
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Not trying to hide anything from Google, just code nappers and lazy webmasters.

Any thoughts?
-s-

[bcc1234]

It is going to appear in google's cache.

[Powdork]

Not trying to hide anything from Google, just code nappers and lazy webmasters.

Any thoughts?
-s-

I don't think hitting view source implies lazy napping. Moreso a desire for knowledge.

[WebManager]

I definitely wouldn't do this - if it's not that important, err on the cautious side.

[Powdork]

Another thought. I wouldn't trade links with someone if I couldn't view their code. Just a thought.

[kfander]

Unless it's something really special, I seldom revisit sites that don't allow me to view source or to right click.

[djgreg]

You must have very spacial contnet on your website?

[piskie]

Anyone clever enough to be able to utilise your VERY SPECIAL code is clever enough to overcome this simple hurdle.

[WebManager]

djgreg

What is "spacial contnet"

Sounds a bit rude to me! ;)

[djgreg]

Puh,
got too much margaritas last night ;)

[stcrim]

Not all that rude - we are building car dealer sites and the compitition is heavy...

We want to hide the metas becasue of their value in Inktomi but don't make a Google mistake while doing it...

-s-

[pageoneresults]

> We want to hide the metas becasue of their value in Inktomi.

Not worth it in my opinion. A few years ago and I might have agreed with you. Today, there are just too many other factors involved. You can do well without the metas, they are just an added bonus with Ink. Even then, the weight given to description and keywords is minimal.

If you are that concerned with the content of the metas, couldn't you do a trusted feed?

[jomaxx]

I have trouble believing your meta tags are so valuable that they need to be protected in this way. But if you're optimizing for Inktomi, only serve up the meta tags to their spider. That way at least your cloaking probably won't be detected and penalized by the other SE's.

[GoogleGuy]

Wouldn't recommend it. Just my first-blush reaction.

[stcrim]

To this day you can still rank Number one is INK with just a title and tag and NO body content.

The same pages we build for INK are available for google (all that robots text stuff screams SEO) and we just want to make sure there safe in Google with hiddeb metas.

As far as there value - to the people who want to know what we are doing - they are very valuable.

Again, the only question here is, will Google have a problem with the metas being hidden.

Anybody?

-s-

[stcrim]

Thanks GoogleGuy - Got it

-s-

[EliteWeb]

Need to view source, my mac views all source, or lynx does a good job too :P oOOoo when i cant view source i never bookmark the site or go back to it unless its a zeroday site ;P

[Hashishan]

that "trick" is not effective at all. in order to display an html page, it must be downloaded onto your computer. it is trivially easy to go into a browser's cache and view the page source

[Brett_Tabke]

That "trick" is an SSI construct. You'll never see the real source to steal it.

[djgreg]

I agree with Brett. SSI is a very effective way to hide things, which never should be seen by others.

[Chris_R]

I am kind of against this as it gives people something to complain about, but two things to keep in mind:

1) There is a lot less emphasis on meta tags than there used to be. I don't even think it is worth doing and I doubt many people stealing your tags would be successful

2) On the otherhand - if all you got rid of was the tags - I doubt anyone would think to check the google cache - unless they always use the google cache.

3) Google guy says not to

For 1 & 3 I'd rule against it.

[GlynMusica]

Meta tags work in my equation to do some early page branding. As to the overall impact they have in the search engines I think that they work in favour of the site the lower down the regional SE tree you go. In that your Googles might ignore Metas completely but your specialsearchfrance.com that uses a slightly more dated technology will place more importance on them. Problem with the gloabalised search is that a lot of other minor but still siginificant (a lead is a lead is a lead) search engines get tarred with the same brush.

I'll use Metas until such time as one of the target engines tells me that they will penalise a site that uses them. I'm no meta tag purist but these are tags given *for optimisation* so why would I not use them?

Piskie, one of us missed the plot, I thought the guy posting was using the code to stop lazy coders nicking his tags. The fact is that the lazy coders would not have used this code so I am a little lost why you think they would work it out automatically.

If (original poster) the code sorts you out you might use it, but then one post from GoogleGuy seems to send the fear (withnail and I) in to webmasters and this seems a little bit irrational!

Then again it all depends on who is sending you the traffic, and that's one for your log files.

Have fun.

Glyn.

[DonRoss]

From what I've seen, if GoogleGuy says don't do it, then don't do it....

[GlynMusica]

That is based on an assumption that a Google rule is a rule across the board. Don't agree, sorry. The fact that they are the most proactive communicatively is a good thing, but it seems that whereas previously the SEO's optimised their sites and Google tried to tweak its algo accordingly, now SEO's can share the same bed with the SE's but the return is no longer free its a PPC campaign.

Still that's progress I guess. I'm just trying to keep it real without unecessary costs and still deliver targeted traffic.

:)

Glyn.

[nebuhost]

Why not just serve the tag to Ink, instead of all spiders?

Or serve the same page the humans page to humans and google, and the other to the rest...