Webmasters Stack Exchange
Webmasters Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [cloaking]

The act of serving different content to different website visitors, particularly when serving different content to search engine bots than normal website users.

Cloaking is an outdated blackhat SEO technique to describe the process of serving different content to search engines than to normal website users.

It is against the terms of service of most search engines (eg. Google) and can see a site penalised for its practise.

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Why is honest cloaking for Ajax considered bad practice?

Ajax-only websites are laden with many problems. Search engine invisibility is merely a small problem. They are also unbookmarkable and unlinkable and they break the functionality of back- and forward-buttons without hacks. Fundamentally, they are…
Jordan
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Does text-shadow CSS affect SEO ranking by risking a cloaking penalty?

I've done googling this but didn't found any answers and would love to try this out on my website. As it's a good ranking website, I want to ask you before risking it. font-size: 50px; text-shadow: 0px 1px 1px #ddd, 0px…
theRadBrad
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What is domain "masking" or "cloaking"? Why should it be avoided for a new web site?

What exactly is the domain name "masking" or "cloaking" offered by some hosting companies, (as opposed to redirection), and what are the various reasons it should be avoided when setting up a new web site "on the cheap"?
Chris W. Rea
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Is limiting the page views from users but allowing Googlebot unlimited access considered cloaking?

Domaintools when accessing Whois info like this: http://whois.domaintools.com/google.com gives error once free account reaches 20 or so lookups. It then does not return a HTTP 200. But Google it seems does not get this error and it can crawl all of…
AgA
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Is it considered cloaking if I show different content to users depending on wether or not the pageview was a "landing"?

If a user comes to my website from an external source, the page they landed on will be modified to include all the "landing page tips and tricks that increase conversion," plus a small message pops up that tells them the rules for posting. If a user…
clickbait
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Hide joyride (intro javascript) for Googlebot

I am using a joyride script for new visitors. Example here: http://foundation.zurb.com/sites/docs/v/5.5.3/components/joyride.html After the vistior is done with the intro, a cookie will be created and the joyride won't show up again, if the user is…
Kilise
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How to specify paywall contents for multiple pages

I am reading this guide to apply paywall contents to my website so that Google knows I am not cloaking. Unless I have misunderstood something, the example in that guide only deals with 1 particular subpage https://example.org/article and this way of…
VII
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Can I hide ads for Googlebot so it loads my site faster?

We have ads which load sometimes slower, We want to hide those ads for Googlebot. We plan to hide that ad code for googlebot only and show them only to users. Do we risk a Google penalty if we hide ads, or we are free to do that?
mark8422
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Would using mouse movement to change how the page is rendered be considered "cloaking" to Google?

My site can enhance itself to client side rendered (CSR) (ish) if a prediction can be made by mouse movement analysis. It can gauge a visitor's familiarity with the site, confusion, etc. The content gets adjusted to appeal to the individual without…
FrostyFire
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isAccessibleForFree and cloaking

I need an advice regarding isAccessibleForFree and cloaking. I'm running a subscription based news website which has standard free to view teaser (short description) and the full article. When user comes to the website, server knows is this a…
Peter
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Does an age confirmation overlay screen on the landing page for a porn site negatively effect SEO?

I am creating a porn website for my client. Now because of UK laws, we need to have an enter page that confirms that the user is over 18 years old. Now I've had a look at competitors and they are actually putting an overlay over the whole homepage,…
virepo
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Can I "cloak" for crawlers and not use session id parameters and redirects to check for cookies?

I track my users using GET parameters to be able to do it even if they don't allow the use of cookies. And to do that, I need to do 2 redirections the first time the user hits my page. I am having some problems (Googlebot requires 19 redirections)…
Just a nice guy
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Domain cloak and redirect shows just the root domain everywhere?

I'm putting up my first website using AlterVista as a hosting. I have bought a second level domain from them with redirect and I am trying to set it right. normally my page would use http://[domainname].altervista.org I don't want anyone to see the…
Borg777
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Can my single page application deliver an HTML snapshot to search engines?

I’ve SPA (Single Page Application) project that works 100% using AngularJS, with all of it’s content dynamically generated through JavaScript on the client side! As you know this means no crawlability, and I don’t need to use headless browsers to…
Omranic
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displaying first few pages of a pdf on a page = duplicate content?

I am embedding scribd PDFs on my website. These are exam papers PDF which are available on other websites. As it is scribd is an embed/iframe, I think Google considers my page as being empty with no content; Google does see iframe content right? So…
Ace
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