Cloaking vs Random content

Can google tell the difference

[eaden]

If I have a page that serves up random content, it is obviously not for SEO purposes. But if the googlebot comes along, and gets different content than the browser ( due to the randomizing ) can google tell the difference between that and cloaking?

Just a bit worried about pontential penaltys.

[Brett_Tabke]

yes, but penalty is right. Pages that change too often may be downgraded...

[karmablur]

How often is too often?

[dmorison]

How often is too often?

I doubt that there is an answer to that question.

Remember that the objective of a search engine is to return a list of websites that "should" provide information relevant to a particular query.

One of the factors that goes into determining how frequently your site is re-indexed is how frequently it changes (this can be determined by the spider over time), and then a decision has to made as to whether your content remains valid for a particular query.

One of those factors could well be Page Rank - a site with high page rank that changes frequently is far less likely to be penalized for changing frequently than a site with little or no page rank.

So it's a resounding "it depends" i'm afraid.

BBC News for example changes several times a day, but is a high PR site and not penalized in any way at all.

[RawAlex]

I dunno - CNN changes 10 times a day and it is well ranked.

Alex

[karmablur]

Ahh i c, ok.. Thats makes perfect sense.. Thanks. :)

[beebware]

The BBC news website is "Updated every minute of every day" (although I've noticed it's really 30 minutes max!)