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I have emailed him the link to google Terms & Conditions, but he still is unsure. What on earth Sould I tell him to convince him it isnt the way to go?
A simple way to get him to see light might be to get him to sign a disclaimer saying that you dont support and wont be held responsible for any penalties that might occur as a result. That might just be enough to scare him.
Get him to sign that disclaimer if he still wishes to go ahead. Charge him double when he comes back perhaps whilst you try and undo the damage.
Sure there are pages that are up using cloaking.
The web design company is misleading him into thinking this is ok.
I have no problem with people that cloak, but they should know the risks - and most people aren't informed on this.
Cloaking isn't worth doing 99.95% of the time. The advantages of cloaking are so small - EVEN if you don't get caught - to make the cost, trouble, effort not worth it.
Yeah, that's a good reason to use cloaking. Unfortunately the search engines don't react friendly to that, unless they get paid for it, as in xml feeds.
In theory cloaking would help both, engines and users, but the engines are not yet up to the challenge.
So yes, you need to advise the client on the risks involved. Those risks I believe are directly proportional to the expertise of the cloaking method.
I guess there are exceptions, but any type of technology that can't be crawled - is likely to be slow, require plug ins, and/or generally be a big pain.
I can't think of one site I visit that can't be crawled by Search Engines.
I PERSONALLY do not think they would ban the person MANUALLY for having a cloaked site if it was identical in text as they fancy technology they use.
However, Googleguy has said they have automated ways of checking for cloaking.
A site doesn't need to be crawled to be indexed. Google doesn't want people to mess around with that sort of stuff. But they aren't jerks either.
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But are you going to be the one who makes the stand with your own sites? :)
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AW
Surely almost any design or user tracking issue can be handled just as well using a spider-friendly approach. Google controls 3/4 of all SE referrals, so why cripple yourself?
Well I lost the client. The other company convinced him that Google DOES allow cloaking although they wouldnt of course put that in writing!
I examined the web design companies own cloaked pages and they are full of repeated keywords and other obvious spamming techniques. It seems that if Google is relying on dealing with this kind of spamming with their algo, then the algo doesnt work! In which case there isnt any point in filling a spam report either!
This is the 4 fourth client we have lost this year due to us refusing to get involved in spamming. If the Google algo cant spot such obvious cloaking and doesnt therefore deal with it, how can I continue to justify my stance to my business partners and clients?
Your competitor lies to catch you clients.
Unfortunately - thatīs live, isnīt it? Playing by the rules doesnīt necessarily mean that you will win the game.
I'll tell you who do respond and act on it quickly, inktomi. I agree with you about the last update, I dont know what's going on with the algo that is supposed to kill of bltant spamming, but it doesnt seem to work from what I can see.
You could talk about the "risk factor." Tell your prospects that cloaking and other spam techniques are like speeding, with one difference: When you speed and get caught, you pay a one-time fine. When you spam and get caught, you pay a fine (i.e., you lose revenues) every day that you're out of Google.
Spam techniques may make sense for shady affiliate sites that belong to the domain-of-the-month club. But if the client's Web site is part of an established business that doesn't want to change domain names every time it gets caught in Google's spam filter, responsible SEO techniques make a lot more sense than spamming.
Did all that on each occassion. troble is, clients want to believe it's somehow ok for them to do it!
Googleguy has said they have automated ways of checking for cloaking
That way the search engine can be recruited to give the site a higher position in the SERPS than it might otherwise have done if it recorded the data on your actual page.
What I don't understand is this:
Assuming that cloaking entails deliberately and knowingly engaging in deception, why would a webmaster or a company think that a website which has #1 position in the SERPS as a result of cloaking is better than a #30 position in the SERPS as a genuine reflection of its content?
At least if the position is based on the content, you can work to improve the content...
What's the point of gaining position on the basis of practices such as cloaking (even if you can 'get away' with it), when it involves knowing deception?
