Cloaking software 2002

[liquidstar]

Okay, I've read literally hundreds of posts and messages from around the internet on the subject of cloaking, and I've decided to take the plunge. I read most everything that could be read on this board, and came to the conclussion that no matter how much I work my skill set is way too limited. That being the case, I checked out a few cloaking software sites. It seems that the ones that have been recommended in the past (on this board) are either PR0ed or are no longer selling their product. With the way software changes, I was hoping that someone could steer me the right way for the best software in 2002. I've found WW to be the best place to get non spammy responses to these kind of requests, and I hope you guys can help me out again. Thanks.

[Air]

It's always tough to give a recommendation for any product, we generally steer clear of recommendation type questions.

If you have questions about specific features or whether in peoples' experience certain features are more desireable than others, or what to look (and not look) for, we'll be happy to entertain those.

Here's what I consider desireable:

-flexibility to easily turn cloaking on and off
-multiple methods of detecting spiders
-logging, so that you know the script is working
-notification of spider visits (a nice to have)
-logging spider visits for trending analysis
-the script does not use redirection to serve pages
-if you don't want to get into editing code then a GUI interface is nice
-IP address updates included

Here's what I consider undesireble:

-scripts that redirect users or search engines
-scripts that use templates to create pages
-scripts that force you to configure parameters for every page

This is all IMO of course.

Are you solving a particular problem with cloaking or is it "just" a measure of flexibility you want to gain? It may make a difference in what features are desireable depending on the reason (maybe, maybe not :) )

[Brett_Tabke]

The only one Air left out is *speed*. There are some real dogs out there from what I've seen. I know of one cloaking program, that wanted to load the daily it's daily log file for every page view. That's not bad if the site only gets a few hundred hits, but when you get into 10k or more, that can be very significant.

[liquidstar]

Is there any place to compare the functionality? Or is it just a matter of doing all the legwork/research? Thanks for the responeses.

[Air]

there used to be a comparison chart on spiderhunter.com, it may be a little dated now. You might want to check the cloaking category at ODP as well.

[PhilC]

...and came to the conclussion that no matter how much I work my skill set is way too limited.

I may have misunderstood the original post but I understood it to mean that liquidstar wants to use cloaking in lieu of optimization. If that's so, cloaking won't do anything for you in terms of good rankings.

Cloaking is merely a means of hiding the html code in pages. It is most used to hide it from everyone except spiders. What's in the hidden code (pages) is down to the creator of the pages. If they are not optimized to perform well in the rankings, cloaking won't come to the aid.

I've probably misunderstood the original post - but maybe not.