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I'm new here so I'm not sure if this has been asked before...
1/. Allow Google to cache the page and show your cloaked page to all and sundry :(
2/. Prevent the caching and 'flag' the fact that you might be cloaking by so doing.
3/. Allow the cache but use devious techniques to obfuscate the cloaked page, making it difficult for your competitors to identify exactly what you are doing.
There are people cloaking succesfully and there are sites getting banned - I know examples of both. Its not impossible to cloak for Google, just more difficult.
IMO the biggest risk is of your site being reported by a competitor.
As page rank is so important to your position, cloaking has much less value on Google anyway.
welcome to webmasterworld (I am quite new, too ;-)...
Cloaking is a short fame. Sooner or later you are penalized and your ranking is gone to the last page. Worse is, that the pages that you a directing to are penalized by google, too.
The most important thing is: google will not sue you, but others will. The FTC reacted and in Germany there are serveral laws now considering foul competition.
Real pages are the long run, we did both and survived with the real thing...
my 2 pennies
Nah, you are not stupid - its a daft 'trekky' name for IP or Agent delivery.
Its using software on the server to show one page to the search engine spider and a different one to the real world.
Newbie cloaking primer [webmasterworld.com]
tikiman
Welcome to WebmasterWorld
as far as people talking about their good experiences with cloaking, won't happen. Cloaking is a bit touchy and people who are good at it don't get caught and also don't raise their hand and say "look at me". That would sort of defeat the purpose. I can tell you that you have to really know what you are doing to make it work. Otherwise you will get caught and get sites banned.
not that I know anything about it.
<added>as Beachboy said there are many useful purposes for cloaking style techniques, I use quite a few in many different situations. I do assume though that your questions deals with the spam style one.
Google is set up so you don't need to cloak to be successful.
I know the basics of cloaking, but fail to see the real benefit.
They basically promoted hundreds of links and keywords WITHOUT delivering any different content. Any region, country, business ・you name it ・they 澱ought・it.
Examples:
Korean Graduate School - Doing Business In Korea
Global Business - Global Business Information
Germany Business Culture - Germany Mba
Brazil Business - Brazil Mba
(Again: Its not just 5 pages - it seems to work somehow for several hundred "pseudo" or "on the fly" pages)
Is it (and it seems to be) and how is it possible to avoid the PR algorithm? Is this considered ethical SEO ・and if so: which software is used for it? If not: How will google and dmoz react to it?
(Remark: I xxxed the address but I think it should still be possible to investigate the process.)
Thank you.
[edited by: Marcia at 6:55 am (utc) on July 25, 2002]
[edit reason] no specifics, please [/edit]
These are all separate domains, right? Nobody is going to get a quality ranking in Google without PageRank, and so therefore, somehow, this person you're referring to is feeding PR to each domain.
You asked how Dmoz would respond, but you didn't mention whether all these domains are in the Open Directory. From what you've said, I rather doubt it. If this guy does submit all those domains to the ODP, probably it's just a matter of time before it's noticed and stopped. But it may never get that far. No-value, minimum-content sites are usually rejected.
How will Google respond? Google prefers to give preference to sites that have some value. Should Google become aware of them and judge them as spam, they might well disappear with the next update.
Is it ethical? Well, that's gonna depend on who you ask. ;)
You asked about software. Can't answer that one.
problem for the google pr is only that the site is up since months - and so all the pages basically "feed" at least the second level pages.
(if i understand pr right ...)
[edited by: Marcia at 6:51 am (utc) on July 25, 2002]
[edit reason] no specifics, please [/edit]
1) Posting of individual URLs is frowned upon.
2) Person is cloaking, but they are not monopolizing the results
3) Term is relevant to search results
4) Company that is doing this is a VERY LARGE "SEO firm" that does work for fortune 500 companies.
5) Yes cloaking is always easy to spot on Google.
Chris-r - I do not agree with your opinion - that "business school" is clearly cloaking - for search terms that are obviously not appropriate for the school.
Here in Germany (search term German Graduate School) such an action is considered not only unethical but also illegal and will lead to serious charges - and they clealy have attack german business schools as well.
Probe - i would suggest that you report the abuse to google and tell them about the cloaking.
According to the google guidelines this can even lead to the banning of the particular domains.
I have even looked up the dmoz - and in the particular directory of this - lets call it business school they also use two different domains pointin to the very same source. I am shocked to see this type of behavior tolerated by the editors.
I think this is even affecting the image of google - because this is basically misleading the customers and it actually works in the very same way as hidden advertising pages among the results.
I would really like to know how google (googleguy?) react on that.
As far as i know they did never say this is their new policy.
Quite frankly - the school has no business in Africa, Asia, Europe, ... or any other country than a particular state in the South of the US. The school is not even ranked among the top schools according to several reports ala USA today, Princeton, AOL ...
Another thought: Probe - it might be worth emailing the dean of the Txxxxxxxxxx, A........ Graduate School itself because i can not imagine that they want to hear their name connected with unethical and illegal activities.
Good luck with your report.
Just my five cents.
Just because they do not have a business school in Germany does not mean it isn't relevant. Granted - it wouldn't be my first choice.
It is against Google's "rules" (their #1 rule) and google could/might ban them.
As far as cloaking goes - this is one of the least "harmful" instances of it.
Everyones ideas of what is ethical is different.
The rule seems to be "If it is something I don't do - it is unethical" or "If it is something my competitor does that I don't especially when they rank higher - it is unethical"
But let's face it - MOST of the people on this board are looking for ways to get listed HIGHER in google. They pick and choose what they consider ethical. If you are changing your page to make google like you - is that really more or less ethical?
I am sure someone has already reported this to Google.
Oh - and this does not hurt the image of google IMHO. I seriously doubt any user would complain about this page. If they did - they would spend all their time compalining.
Webmasters probably complain 100 times more than any user would. I would wager to say 99% of the complaints google receives are from webmasters.
I would wager to say 99% of the complaints google receives are from webmasters.
And they're probably the same 3 questions over and over:
"Why are you letting my competitor spam?"
"Why isn't my site in your index?"
"Why was I penalized?"
Of course, judging by Google's support newsgroup, the non-webmaster complaints are the same two questions over and over and over:
"Why are there so many pop-up ads on Google?"
"How do I make Google stop saving my search history?"
At this point, I have to assume Google's tech support is either the most jaded crew in the world, or the most irritable.
Webmasters probably complain 100 times more than any user would.
I'm always amazed by how often that concept gets lost in the ethics discussion.
Real search engine users don't view source code.
If you have contributed content to a search engine database that causes a real user to take the time to complain, then you are a spammer.
Everything else is just competitive whining.
(we now know that this is a clear case of spam
from an american business school that is giving
classes in ethics and marketing ...
we also understand that the "promotion" is done
by a "VERY LARGE" company that resides in the same state ...
and we know that actually several domains for the school
are registered by this seo company in arizona ...)
but HOW does it work - i mean - how can these pages stay alive
from an PR point of view? why do they not disappear from the
google point of view?
the pages of the school - that could come up with a search
phrase like "korea business school" are in the google cache
and can also be analysed by clicking the back button on the browser
side.
any explainations?
by the way: i was looking at the referrer list of the
SEO company - looks kinda impressive.
im now wondering what would happen if someone goes down the list
and doublechecks and spamreports to google?
and there we are ... at the critical point of ethics again ...
would be nice to get an response from googleguy.
(zooros: thank you for the comments -
i will eventually contact the dean of the american business school)
Ethics and SEO are a joke. You can not compete as an SEO without using some sort of page/link manipulation. You may trick yourself into believing that you are being ethical, but if you are either:
1) Changing/designing your pages for google vs the user.
or
2) Ripping off your client.
It is kind of like when the US complains about another country following the rules of war. The US makes these rules of war up - as it is easy for us with stealth bombers and fancy missles to sit off the coast and attack a country. (Ok - I will try not to get off track here).
Anyway, no user would complain about that page. They would simply hit their back button. They do have an EXCHANGE program with GERMANY.
I see it time and time again with competitors - complaining about EVERY listing that is slightly off in relevance. Just because they might not meet someone else criteria for being a good business school - doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to get a google listing.
As far as why it works - it works, because the phrases ARE NOT COMPETITIVE. The phrase I used to find the germany page doesn't even get 100 searches a day (0 according to google - they round to the nearest 100).
With a PR of 4 - it is easy to get in the top for a page this uncompetitive. Even the most competitive of their keywords seems to get about 600 a day - for pages that aren't even in the top 30.
They are not bothering anyone except their competitors which is why they probably haven't been caught until now. The PR they have is totally reasonable in respect to their listings.
As far as cloakers go - these guys are harmless. Google is more concerned about getting rid of worthless spam pages than everyone that uses any trick. This page is only worthless to someone competing for their terms.
This isn't true cloaking either (which I should have caught before). It is hiding text with CSS. There is a difference (although not to the user) so if google had cloaking detection - they wouldn't detect this anyway...
can someone explain me why those cloaked pages of the american business school still remain in google and add towards the PR?
i mean - why do they not get wiped out in the next google dance?
do the pages have to be resubmitted over and over?
and as for the ethics:
why not coming up with an ethics proposal -
something in the style of a netiquette ala "good webdesign" -
webmasterworld would be a good place for that -
and for the start lets look at the DONTS in the search engines ...
in a word - a basic guideline for our profession ...
can someone explain me why those cloaked pages of the american business school still remain in google and add towards the PR?
They remain in Google for the same basic reason that invisible text [webmasterworld.com] does. Like any other type of spam tactic, the majority of cloaked content that gets removed, is only removed after someone (usually a competitor) reports it.
If a competitor does complain, but there aren't any other complaints from real users, and the level of search activity for the related terms is very low, the odds are it will remain in the database for a very long time.
It's all a matter of priority. If you are going to take the time to review all the sites that are reported, odds are you are going to focus your efforts on spam that shows up for highly visible keyword phrases.
and as for the ethics:
why not coming up with an ethics proposal -
something in the style of a netiquette ala "good webdesign" -
webmasterworld would be a good place for that -
and for the start lets look at the DONTS in the search engines ...
Actually WebmasterWorld wouldn't be a good place for that. There are many people already pushing dozens of different "Code of Ethics". And each one comes loaded with all kinds of personal agendas.
WebmasterWorld is a place where webmasters come to discuss all aspects of developing and promoting a website. Attaching any kind official code of conduct to this place would destroy it in a heartbeat.
As far as moving this discussion to one of the ethics of cloaking, I think that would be something better suited for the Cloaking forum [webmasterworld.com].
I am not following you. The page exists just as any other page would. Submitting pages to google is (virtually) useless. They don't need to submit the links as google will find them from their other pages. Google follows the hidden links and counts them just as any other link.
To get our clients prominent listings for search terms that produce a return on their investment with us, if possible on the first page of leading search portals and (to the best of our ability) keep them there.
Is there anything else?
Ethics and SEO are a joke.
Sorry, Chris_R, can't agree here.
Given that ethics is a little subjective anyway, my take is:
[gets on soapbox]
It is NOT unethical to present information in the format that Google likes best
It is NOT unethical to attempt to get your site to to the top of the search engine rankigs.
It IS unethical to use tricks that might result in your client's site being banned without advising them if the risk in advance.
"Competitive" (even "hyper-competitive") is not necessarily unethical.
Is tax avoidance unethical? possibly, possibly not
Is tax evasion unethical? yes.
Is paying too much tax unethical? no.
We have very good rankings on Google for most of our customers without using any unethical techniques.
We build content, get the site structure right, try to make sure the pages would pass a hand inspection, and make sure they are in the right directories.
If a customer might benefit from a riskier (OK, "unethical") technique - we get their approval before doing it.
So, are we ethical all the time - of course not. In business, like war, the "taking part" is NOT the main thing:)
Could we practice SEO without being unethical - of course we could.
Just as in business, we can be as competitive as our conscience, and personal ethical code allows us to be.
[exits left, soapbox under arm - ducking and weaving as he goes]
i.e. looking at the differences between them -
at least as far as we know ...
by the way - considering your statements:
makemetop when i follow you arguments - lets call it the
darwinian model of SEO - how about this:
i admire your values - but i just realized that spam reporting you and
the lets say 9 other people ahead of me is much easier
than doing real SEO ;)
just an example ... no need to go to church and obtain
absolution ...
although i agree that there wont be a definete guideline -
how about something like a netiquette ... more a proposal
than an act or order
