Is this cloaking?

[Evergreen]

I write very clean web sites and have no idea how cloaking is done, but I think I may have found an example.

I did a search for a unique phrase on my home page. I put it in quotes. My page came up #1, but I found 3 copycats. Two were the same guy with 2 sites with the exact same text as my homepage, but the 3rd is the one I don't understand. When you click on the link, it doesn't go to the domain that is listed with Google and it looks totally clean - no imitation there. But if you look at the cache, my hompage text is totally copied and unformatted. It's just the straight text from my homepage. So what is this guy doing? It looks like he's showing Google one thing and the visitors something completely different. Of course I'm also worried that my rankings will be hurt because he has duplicated my homepage text this way.

What would be my best course of action with both these copy cats? I've already written the owner of the 2 regular sites a nasty gram and told him to take those pages down, but this third one is so weird, I just don't know how to approach it.

[Gede]

Hi,

maybe he uses frames. Make a link to the copycats page somewhere and save the url.

He probably breaks out of the frame when loaded.

[cabbie]

You should be very worried.These copies can really hurt you if they can acquire more respect from google.Send google a spam report and all 3 webmasters a cease and desist with a threat about copyright infringement and you will sue them for everything they have got if your site disappears from google.

[marttali]

Yep that's cloaking allright.I think u should:
a)inform them about copyright laws;
b)threaten them with a lawsuit;
c)inform their hosting providers about the matter.

One think is for sure - u gotta to something!

[Chris_R]

If you search for unique phrases - you will often find this. Depending on how many pages or sites you have - you will run into this quite often. there are tons of content stealers out there.

Usually they are pretty poor at SEO and use so many tricks as to show up like a christmas tree on google's radar screens that it isn't a problem.

If you have one site - learn how to do DMCA and complain to hosts (technically you shouldn't threaten to sue anyone unless you REALLY plan to sue - however you can refer to it in a round about way "I could" or "I will consider").

If you have lots of pages that are popular - you will waste all your time doing this.

If they look like amateurs - I usually leave them alone - not because they should be left alone, but I just don't have the time.