Redirecting based on referrer

Is this cloaking?

[thrasher141]

Does redirecting based on referrer = cloaking?

For example, page A in my site ranks well in Google for keyword x. But I want page B to rank well for keyword x, so on page A I put in some code that checks to see if the referrer was Google and if so then Response.Redirect to page B. So now when a Googler searches for x, page A shows up in the results but when they click it they are taken to page B. So I'm not really hiding page A or page B, just redirecting traffic a little.

Has anyone else used this technique? Is it considered cloaking?

[volatilegx]

Since you are using a redirect it technically isn't cloaking. But it is very similar to HTTP_REFERER cloaking where you show different content based on the HTTP_REFERER header.

[new_shoes]

I used a similar technique to what you described (ok, it was one of several naughty things I did) and I got banned. If I were you, I wouldn't do it. Instead add a clear text that says "What this (link to page B) what you were looking for?" in the top of the page.

That is no different from landing on a webmasterworld page from google and it shows the highlighting of the words you searched for on google. WebmasterWorld obviously checks the referer and desciminates accordingly.

Eg: Try this search and click on the first link [google.com]

Good luck.