"Stop anti-cloaking hysteria"

SE executive calls for SE:s to join in open discussion

[rencke]

"How can engines like Altavista be against cloaking when they do it themselves, says Scandinavian SE executive Mikkel de Mib Svendsen, referring to AV:s own homepage. Svendsen spoke before a large international audience at the Internet Marketing Conference in Stockholm Oct 26-27 and in the presence of executives from Altavista, Inktomi, GoTo, Looksmart, Lycos and Yahoo.

"We are not against cloaking, we are against spamming as defined in redzones post in WebmasterWorld on Oct 3, he said lashing out against the current "anti cloaking hysteria". "Relevant traffic is important to us all and professional marketers only want targeted traffic. The rest we call spammers."

Svendsen also revealed that he is working together with other SE:s to create an effective worldwide black-list for spammers. "Spam one, get banned by all", he said, adding that the response had been good so far.

"Cloaking is good for you, if the purpose is to protect your code, but SE:s don't talk much about it. Probably because they don't know what it is", Svendsen added.

"Brett Tabke brought this matter up and we should work with him and others. I believe SE:s and SEO people can use each other", Svendsen said, adding that dialogue is needed and that the future policy on cloaking will be formed at WebmasterWorld and other public fora.

The representatives from Altavista and Inktomi agreed and said that they will join Svendsen in open discussion in public fora. The other executives, who were on the stage at the time, made no objections and several were seen nodding conscent.

Mikkel Svendsen is posting in WebmasterWorld under the nick "Mikkel". One of the threads where he has participated can be found here [webmasterworld.com].

Mikkel de Mib Svendsen - a former SEO specialist - is managing director of Kvasir.dk, the second largest search engine in Denmark - largest of the ones with a spidered index. Kvasir is owned by SoL, Scandinavia on Line, a leading Nordic content provider with 240 employes, which also operates evreka.com in Sweden, kvasir.no in Norway and evreka.fi in Finland. All engines are the leading in their respective countries and use Fast technology where they rely upon their own complete indexes for national searches and upon Fast's world index of currently 550 million pages for non-national searches.

- Jan Rencke

[Brett_Tabke]

Rencke, our man in the field.

Nice bit reporting and thank you for promoting WebmasterWorld as a source for these types of discussions. We may be a bit of a thick read for the new user at times, but it is refreshing to have a place where some intelligent discussions about these issues can take place.

As always, the door is open to the search engines 24x7 - any time they wish to be heard, the floor is theirs.

[henki]

I get intimedated by your great reporting Renke! That is why I have not gotten around to make proper reports in the other forum. Talking about it, I find it refreshing to jump around the different fora. You don't get to bored when you have the variation in design.

WMW has a great host in Brett Tabke and his all star team of moderators. You guys rock!

[rencke]

<blush> Aw shucks henki, you didn't have to say that. Just look what you have done. Made all the other mods blush too.</blush>

[HenrikC]

I participated in the IMS as well and found it very usefull. A good dialog between SE and SEO is usefull for everyone.

We are all working for the same result - high relevance in search results.

So - I'm listening :)

[NFFC]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld HenrikC,

>We are all working for the same result - high relevance in search results

Well you are certainly starting out on the right foot, identifying that the core concerns of the SE and the SEO share a common aim.
Recently there have been many discussions regarding these issues, a few have centered around IP delivery but the common theme seems to be what is spam and how can it be prevented.

I see that this is your first post so let me give you a nudge in the direction of the most recent pertinent thread:

Comment on cloaking from a SE [webmasterworld.com] Started by Mikkel_Svendsen and continued thereafter.

[Mikkel Svendsen]

Hi Henrik, good to see you here. Welcome on board :)
I hope you will find the posts in these threads usefull. Feel free to ask any questions you have and add comments.

[seth_wilde]

I can already see relations between SEOs and SEs improving. I think as long as the lines of communication continue to stay open (maybe even a little wider :) ) We can achieve both of our goals.