Ink Dropping Cloaked Pages

[nell]

All my cloaked pages dropped. Non-cloaked pages ok.

[Marcia]

Sorry to hear that, Nell. Is that free pages, or paid also?

[nell]

Paid but I still have a smile. My competitors cloaked pages are gone (he has no smile) along with mine, but I was covered.

I always put up 2 pages in very competitive products. One is cloaked and choked (keyword stuffed), the other is standard. One is submitted using the domain name, the other using just the IP address. Up to now, the cloaked page was #1/2/3 and the standard 5/6/7.
Now that the cloaked pages are gone, the standard page is up to #1/2.

My reasons for the 2 pages are:
(a) I use different Titles and Descriptions on each.(baiting two hooks with different bait)
(b) I can optimize one of these pages at a time. If I screw up, I'm still covered with the other listing that's still there. (similar situation as now with the cloaked page being removed)
(c) Not all people click on #1/2. With 2 pages I am both on the top and mid-way down the search results.
(d) AOL Search (for subscribers) likes the standard page more. AOL Search (anybody) likes the cloaked optimized page more. With 2 pages I have AOL well covered.
(e) The $1/week charge for 2 pages ($25/yr each) is a real Santa Claus gift in competitive, high volume, high profit product searches.

Medium to low competitive products I use non-cloaked standard pages.

[4eyes]

I am seeing a ranking increase on most of my inktomi sites.

It might be due to removal of cloaked sites as I have not made any tweaks on the majority of these.

The largest increases are on the most competitive phrases - kind of makes sense.

Anyone seeing similar?

[bashville]

Hi Nell, We ran into the same problem with inktomi. I'm curious as to which provider you used to submit? Also how do you suppose that Inktomi was able to determin the pages were being cloaked?

[mayor]

I had a site of about 500 pages dumped by Ink about three weeks ago. This site had no paid submission pages but was old and drawing good traffic, presumably by being in the BOW data base. I initially assumed it had been the work of a competitor because I found five pages in the redirect-west data base that had never been submitted through the paid submission program. Even though these few remaining pages were in the redirect-west data base, they ranked so low they weren't drawing any traffic. After exhaustive analysis, I was unable to confirm that the site had been trashed by a competitor.

A long time ago, I placed the google no-archive tag on all the pages of this site. That's because some of them get updated often. It's also because I wanted to fool competitors into thinking the pages were cloaked so they wouldn't bother copying them. They were NOT cloaked at all.

A few months ago, having had this and another site trashed by Google with PR0, I decided to remove the google no-archive tag from both sites. I ran a global cut on both sites and a spot check indicated all the no-archive tags were removed. Today, after seeing this thread, I took a second look at the two sites. The surviving site has no google no-archive tags. The trashed site still had about 50% of the pages containing the no-archive tag, much to my surprise, for reasons unknown.

So it's worth theorizing that Ink is looking at sites with the google no-archive tag as being cloaking suspects and trashing them. If anyone with an Ink-trashed site is using the google no-archive tag lets hear it!

[chadlerh]

A lot of our sites were just dropped from ink. We submit through positiontech.

[Jester]

Hi Mayor, The numerous pages that we had dropped did not use the no cache tag that is often used for Google. However similar to Chad we also submitted through position tech.

[nell]

All they have to do is visit your site at the same time with both the usual Slurp spider and a normal IP as any visitor would.
If both are viewing the same page there should be no difference in file size. If not, the site is obviously cloaking.
I have a friend in Boston who is webmaster for a large company. He removed the Google "no archive" tags from all pages 1 1/2 months ago. At that time when I asked him why he simply replied "just do it". As I did not have the tag on any pages I just blew it off. I certainly would not have related this "friendly advice" with INK but it explains alot in hindsight.

They are probably "weeding out" the cloaking doorway sites at the last minute, just prior to implementing their policy of not being able to substitute domains after June 1st thus catching a lot of people out.

Position Tech for us as well.

(edited by: nell at 5:53 pm (utc) on May 28, 2002)

[NFFC]

Are you sure it's a cloaking issue and not just keyword stuffing tripping the filters?

[Jester]

Hi Nell, That would be a tremendous amount of work on Iktomi's part to uncover all of the pages that are cloaking. I agree that pages that contain the no cache tag would be a good place to start, however the pages that we had removed did not have the tag.
Could it be a much larger issue with position tech? Did anybody lose pages from the inktomi database that did not submit through position tech?

[Air]

Remember too that many cloakers would probably only feed the version of the page with the "nocahce" to Google, Ink would get a "nocache" free page.

>Are you sure it's a cloaking issue and not just keyword stuffing tripping the filters?

Agreed. Maybe both the cloaking angle and the more traditional spam angle needs to be considered.

[test4echo]

Has anyone thought about registration of the domains? I had a couple of domains dropped as well, all registered with the same name. Other domains included thru Position Tech registered under a different name are still in.

[MarkHutch]

I've noticed from my logs that Ink is spidering new pages that have been around for a long time, but not part of their BOW program. Could it just be a normal rotation to different pages that are included in their BOW program??

(edited by: MarkHutch at 8:44 pm (utc) on May 30, 2002)

[Jester]

Hi Test4Echo,
Were you using the same techniques for all of the domains? I'm still wondering if this is just a temporary glitch from Position Tech(I can hope can't I) or something more meaningful.

[test4echo]

Same exact code on the domains that were removed and the ones that remained with a different registrant.

[john316]

>>Are you sure it's a cloaking issue and not just keyword stuffing tripping the filters?<<

the chicken or the egg?

Whats the point of cloaking for INK if you can't kw stuff?

[jrap]

Just for clarification, should I remove the
"<META NAME="googlebot" CONTENT="noindex">"
on my pages? I just signed up for PositionTech and have yet to be spidered. I put that meta tag on my pages because the site that will be in Inktomi is a mirror of my main site. I had to make the mirror because the URL for the main site was too long. Any suggestions? I don't want google to find the mirror site, figure out it is the exact same and penalize me.

[Jester]

Ugh, Not the answer I was looking for Test4Echo. However, your response prompted me to check, and it looks like although the majority of our pages were dropped, a few registered to the same owner and using the same techniques were kept.

John, I couldn't agree with you more. However I'm sure some people keyword stuff but do not cloak.

[dave83]

I don't believe Ink is doing anything to drop cloaked pages but I know for a fact that they added at least an entire class C block of IP addresses that are crawling PI pages.. and I also know for a fact that while they weren't looking for cloaked pages.. they knew they would catch a lot of cloakers whose IP databases are not as up to date as they should be..

The new IP's have all come online in the last 10-14 days, so I think those of you who have had pages dropped should look closely at your IP database..

[mayor]

Jester >> Could it be a much larger issue with position tech? Did anybody lose pages from the inktomi database that did not submit through position tech? <<

To the contrary my site that was not affected in the recent purge contained a number of pages submitted through Position Tech. The site that was trashed had no paid pages.

[Jester]

Hi Dave, I did notice that inktomi added a new Class C which did catch us by surprise. However that class has since been added and our pages recrawled w/out any changes. Could it be that MSN, AOL and other inktomi powered searches have been slow to pull from the updated inktomi data base?

[nell]

66.196.65
66.196.73
216.35.0-255

(edited by: littleman at 3:14 am (utc) on May 31, 2002)

[test4echo]

Anyone have an idea how Ink targeted those pages? I'm not performing IP detection, so missing the Ink agent by IP doesn't count for me.

[SEOPTI]

I have 2 accounts with positiontech and all my domains were penalized, even domains which were not cloaked and without java redirection.

Question is how they penalize. I believe they penalize IPs and domains.

[Consumer Info]

Nell or anyone,
where did that spider list come from?
Send me some info I am only using one source to get my IPs but that list definetyly makes me rethink that...

[test4echo]

SEOPTI,
I agree with the idea of IP and domain banning. So does this mean the list is given to Inktomi by Position Tech? Have you tried Verisign and see if those domains are flushed?

[Shadoze]

I don't think the sites or pages being dropped has anything to do with cloaking specifically or PT giving lists of domains to Ink.. I think Ink did catch a lot of sites that were cloaking when the new spiders were released.. but not by design..

I have several thousand pages with PT, a large number cloaked and have not seen any problems.. and they know exactly what I am doing..

When the new Ink IP's were released a couple weeks ago.. I was told they would catch a LOT of cloakers.. I also had the new IP's in my list before they started crawling with them.. if the new spiders got through your cloaking even once that might be all it took to get pages buried..

I have no idea if this is why some sites are having problems.. but based on what I was told.. it does sound logical..

I think there could be several more new class c blocks of spiders coming in the near future.. or at least filling out partial blocks now in use.. but I have no confirmation of that..it's just a hunch

I'm curious if those who have had problems had their pages removed or buried? If you are paying for inclusion I can't imagine Ink removing pages.. burying pages.. yes.. removing them all together..no.. too many legal issues..

Shadoze (formerly dave83)

[seoboy]

well, our pages all seem to be in the index, only buried. at first i thought this was due to the fact that ink just got the wrong template (the ip switch caught us) but it appears as though keywords in the ink template ARE showing up in searches... which suggests a ranking penalty instead.

what is everyone else seeing? does it look like ink got the wrong template, or that they are just penalizing?

for some searches my pages are nowhere to be found; for others, they are buried. for some domains, a search for the domain name brings up all pages (but pages are buried for most keyword searches); for others, only a handful of pages show up when i search for www.domain.com in MSN (but all pages show up in search.positiontech.com)... but keyword searches still bring up pages that do NOT show up in the domain search...

???

sorta reminds me of the primary/secondary database confusion that we saw a year or 2 ago, when they first rolled out the tiered database structure...

anyone have thoughts?

i'm trying to decide whether or not i should shift my pages to a new domain before the june 1 deadline...

seoboy

[afterburner]

I have experienced a drop with some of my domians as well with Inktomi. Here is what Position Tech sent me saying,

"What Inktomi Considers Unwanted:
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Inktomi does not want include:"

- Pages which harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
- Pages whose sole purpose is to direct the user to another page
- Pages which have substantially the same content as other pages
- Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
- Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
- Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
- The use of text that is hidden from the user
- Giving the search engine a different page than the public sees (cloaking)
- Cross-linking sites excessively, to inflate a site's apparent popularity
- Pages built primarily for the search engines
- Misuse of competitor names
- Multiple sites offering the same content
- Pages which use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
- Pages that are deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience