Is A B Testing cloaking?

[Top_Hat]

If I'm doing AB testing showing different versions of a page to different user to test/improve conversion.

Is that cloaking? how would google know the difference?

[wyweb]

That's not cloaking. That's smart testing.

[Mark_A]

Google does it itself, I get the modern page on my work machine and a much simpler page on an old machine at home.

[engine]

welcome to WebmasterWorld Top_Hat

Yes, I agree, it's testing. If you're deliberately trying to fool the site visitors and search engines, that's entirely different.

[videomike]

Hi Top_hat

Cloaking is something different.
Link cloaking for example means that if you are given an affiliate link from a vendor that looks like http://vendorsite.example.com/affiliate.php?aff=123456
Then this not only looks ugly but it often leads to other people stealing your commissions by just replacing affiliate IDs with their own before buying.
Cloaking now means that your create a redirect on your own site so that buyers don't see your aff link directly (eg. http://yourownsite.example.com/recommends/product )
There are software programs that can help you doing this .
This can very often increase the conversion rate, but not in the same degree as AB Testing does.
Testing is essential ;-)

Mike

[edited by: incrediBILL at 3:11 am (utc) on Jun 10, 2010]

[edited by: bill at 9:05 am (utc) on Jun 10, 2010]
[edit reason] Only use EXAMPLE.COM for sample domain names [/edit]

[steveonz]

So you are saying that affiliate links can cause a cloaking effect? I am looking at implementing an affiliate program using www.site.com/index.php?=xyz will this cause an issue?