Cloaking, will it get me banned?

[cgchris99]

I currently have no cloaking on my site. But recently was checking the SERPs an noticed my competiton appearing twice for a couple phrases and they were using two different domains.

They have the "theirfullnamekeyword.com" and xyzkeyword.com

Now the xyzkeyword is the odd one.
I see references in the search engine to
xyzkeyword.com/keyword-keyword2-keyword3.asp

But when you click on it you end up at
on the page that looks exactly like theirfullnamekeyword.com

However, after looking at the source to xyzkeyword.com
I notice the following code
<FRAMESET border=0 frameSpacing=0 rows="100%, *" frameBorder=0><FRAME name=top marginWidth=0
frameSpacing=0
src="keyword phrase1, keyword phrase2, keyword phrase3/index.php"></FRAMESET></HTML>

Is this cloaking?
Will this get them banned?

I need to compete but do not want to get banned by google. What do I do?

[roscoepico]

Chris, check out the SEO cloaking primer [webmasterworld.com] here. Should give you all the information you are looking for.

[cgchris99]

Ok, I read the primer, but this doesn't fall into the same definition that they gave. Yes, there are two domains. The strange thing is hidding the text behind the frames.

It appears the search engine see the frames but you cannot see this text anywhere on the displayed page.

[volatilegx]

Technically, this isn't cloaking. However, it does amount to a very simple method of hiding optimized HTML code. It's easy to see the code by viewing the source of the frameset.

Will it get them banned? Probably not. There's nothing wrong with optimizing a frameset.

[cgchris99]

Since they are using Framesets with slightly different content, I assume it will not be banned for duplicate domains right?

To the user though, they are exactly the same but to a robot, they would be different.

So all I need to do is create a sitemap that points to similar pages on my own site to compete with them on the keywords.

If the hidden frameset is not against the google TOS, then it is probably a good idea to use this method?

[volatilegx]

First, let me say that this thread is going way off topic (cloaking) and further questions should be posted in a more relevent forum like Google News [webmasterworld.com].

Since they are using Framesets with slightly different content, I assume it will not be banned for duplicate domains right?

I assume you mean penalized for duplicate content? Well, the content is different (a frameset is very different from the other page displayed), so they may not be penalized for duplicate content. However, if Googlebot decides to read the source of the frame in the frameset, it may trip the duplicate content penalty.

To the user though, they are exactly the same but to a robot, they would be different.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the sophistication of the robot. I believe Googlebot can follow the links of a frameset.

So all I need to do is create a sitemap that points to similar pages on my own site to compete with them on the keywords.

I guess you've lost me with this question.

If the hidden frameset is not against the google TOS, then it is probably a good idea to use this method?

The frameset is hidden? Why would frames be against Google's TOS? Personally, I wouldn't use this method because there's a good chance the framed content would be "duped out" of the index.

[Total Paranoia]

How can you tell if someone is cloaking for ranking purposes?

I know of someone using <META name="ROBOTS" content="noarchive"> and it makes me suspicous. Could they be serving one thing to engines and another its users? Why would anyone use <META name="ROBOTS" content="noarchive"> on a commercial website?

[Dreamquick]

Not everyone is comfortable with the cache, either on a personal level, or on a business level.

For example in some circumstances it might not make sense to have a month-old page available to users, especially if you have lots of limited time offers and a slightely unsavvy target audience ("but your website said i'd get 25% off my order, and when I came to pay you charged me full price").

Equally I might look at the cached page and decide that since it doesn't portray my business in the best possible way (either rendering errors or just messes up the flow of the page) that I want to stop people using that feature for my site.

- Tony

[Total Paranoia]

Thanks for your answer DreamQuick. I guess that makes perfect sense.

But how can I tell if someone is cloaking for ranking purposes?

[Dreamquick]

If they have any clue about how to cloak their site (and aren't using throw-away sites) you shouldn't be able to tell if they're cloaking at all.

- Tony

[volatilegx]

Sometimes you can tell if the Title of the page as represented in the SERPs is different from the title of the page displayed once you click on the link. Also, if the snippet of text presented in the SERPS cannot be found anywhere on the page, that could be a clue. Neither is absolute proof, though.