Is this cloaking? Is it a problem?

Adding Links based on bot

[kdobson99]

I am developing an ad network of text links that is database driven. One important feature I am implementing is best described as follows...

Site A hosts the ads, but initially no ads appear on any of the pages. Each visitor is checked to see if it is googlebot (or another bot specified by the advertiser) if it is googlebot, then certain ads from the inventory are displayed on that page of site A. Once the ads have been placed on that page of Site A because of a googlebot visit... They become static and stay there for all future visitors to the page.

I am not so worried about whether this is defined as cloaking or not, I am more concerned as to whether you think that either the site hosting the ads or the advertising site would be penalized in any way by google or any other engine because of cloaking related issues?

The reason I want to use this strategy is because then I can be assured that the ads are actually being crawled, rather than just sitting on a page that doesn't get a bot visit. Thank You

[volatilegx]

I don't see a way you could be caught doing this, let alone penalized.

[MovingOnUp]

Sounds like a good plan to me. That could be a very effective way to quickly get links out there.

I would recommend that you also try to do some intelligent placement. Have you script analyze the pages and put the most relevant links on the page (or at least give some weight to relevancy) rather than just randomly placing links.