Would this be considered blackhat tactic?

[zerillos]

I'm thinking of adding a "You might also be interested in..." section to my website. It will show search results from my website, related to the search term through which the visitor came to that particular page.

of course, when googlebot (or any other spider) visits that page, it doesn't come from a search for a particular term. it means i should show the spider something else instead.

would this be considered blackhat tactic according to Google's terms of service?

thank you!

[tedster]

A couple of added steps could make this a very helpful, "white hat" feature for your users. First, knowing that Google does not want to see full search results in their index, I'd limit the number of links suggested to just one or two, maybe three at most.

Second, I'd choose a default link or two for those cases where there is no referrer keyword to use - probably other suggestions for the top keywords that already bring in traffic to that page.

Technically it sounds like cloaking, but it's not "deceptive cloaking", which is the phrase Google uses all the time, so I think it would be OK. You're not zeroing in on the googlebot user agent or IP address to change content.

[zerillos]

as i understand from reading over at google, cloaking is when you show keyword-stuffed pages to the spider, or text writen with the same color as the background (in geneal, content that only the spider will be able to see).

what i'm trying to do is the other way around. this will show content that only the user will be able to see. I haven't decided yet whether or not to show something to the spiders too

it's kind of tricky and i'm really not sure if i should go ahead or not. wouldn't want to get banned now, would i :)

[maximillianos]

Yeah i think you are okay too. You are technically not showing G something different from a regular user. If G came in with the same referral string they would also see the links.

[tedster]

Just show the spiders the same thing a user would see if they came in through direct navigation.

[zerillos]

ok. thanks guys!
i think you might be right

[AussieWebmaster]

also isn't this only shown when a search is done... no bot search no page to view/crawl