IP/referer/client specific content?

[m2gg9]

Hello all,

I would like to display varying content depending on the referer/client headers, as well as the requesting IP. Is there a change of Google penalization if googlebot sees different content then what other users might see?

Cheers,
Mark

[Netizen]

Take a look at Google's guidelines [google.com]

[seomike2003]

It's called cloaking and google does it. But if you do use these technique you'd better have a good reason for it. If your just feeding G a tableless version of the site with the same text then you can probably get by because big forums do that. but if your switching in and out spider food then you'll need to re think it.

[m2gg9]

Thanks for the info. Has anyone suffered any negative consequences for doing such a thing?

Your description of 'you better have a good reason' seems rather subjective. I don't see how a computer could discern whether my reason is good enough or not.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mark

[Netizen]

Basically, if you provide radically different content to search engine spiders in an attempt to rank higher then this will be considered cloaking and will be penalised if you get found out.

[Using IP addresses to present different content based on
location is a form a cloaking which is more commonly referred to as geo-targeting.]

[Nicke]

Is geo-targeting OK with Google?

E.g. do a redirect to a language specific part of the website?

Google itself redirects to /palm if you are using a PDA to access www.google.com (I bought an iPAQ 4150 recently and saw that.)

I made a website for a client which is mainly in English but if I can see it is from Germany I redirect to the German part, that's why I wonder if it is OK.