| By Sumantra Roy
Page cloaking can broadly be defined as a technique used
to deliver different web pages under different circumstances.
There are two primary reasons that people use page cloaking:
i) It allows them to create a separate optimized page
for each search engine and another page which is aesthetically
pleasing and designed for their human visitors. When a
search engine spider visits a site, the page which has
been optimized for that search engine is delivered to
it. When a human visits a site, the page which was designed
for the human visitors is shown.
The primary benefit of doing this is that the human
visitors don't need to be shown the pages which have been
optimized for the search engines, because the pages which
are meant for the search engines may not be aesthetically
pleasing, and may contain an over-repetition of keywords.
ii) It allows them to hide the source code of the optimized
pages that they have created, and hence prevents their
competitors from being able to copy the source code.
Page cloaking is implemented by using some specialized
cloaking scripts. A cloaking script is installed on the
server, which detects whether it is a search engine or
a human being that is requesting a page.
If a search engine is requesting a page, the cloaking
script delivers the page which has been optimized for
that search engine. If a human being is requesting the
page, the cloaking script delivers the page which has
been designed for humans.
There are two primary ways by which the cloaking script
can detect whether a search engine or a human being is
visiting a site:
i) The first and simplest way is by checking the User-Agent
variable. Each time anyone (be it a search engine spider
or a browser being operated by a human) requests a page
from a site, it reports an User-Agent name to the site.
Generally, if a search engine spider requests a page,
the User-Agent variable contains the name of the search
engine.
Hence, if the cloaking script detects that the User-Agent
variable contains a name of a search engine, it delivers
the page which has been optimized for that search engine.
If the cloaking script does not detect the name of a search
engine in the User-Agent variable, it assumes that the
request has been made by a human being and delivers the
page which was designed for human beings.
However, while this is the simplest way to implement
a cloaking script, it is also the least safe. It is pretty
easy to fake the User-Agent variable, and hence, someone
who wants to see the optimized pages that are being delivered
to different search engines can easily do so.
ii) The second and more complicated way is to use I.P.
(Internet Protocol) based cloaking. This involves the
use of an I.P. database which contains a list of the I.P.
addresses of all known search engine spiders.
When a visitor (a search engine or a human) requests
a page, the cloaking script checks the I.P. address of
the visitor. If the I.P. address is present in the I.P.
database, the cloaking script knows that the visitor is
a search engine and delivers the page optimized for that
search engine.
If the I.P. address is not present in the I.P. database,
the cloaking script assumes that a human has requested
the page, and delivers the page which is meant for human
visitors. Although more complicated than User-Agent based
cloaking, I.P. based cloaking is more reliable and safe
because it is very difficult to fake I.P. addresses.
Now that you have an idea of what cloaking is all about
and how it is implemented, the question arises as to whether
you should use page cloaking. The one word answer is "NO".
The reason is simple: the search engines don't like it,
and will probably ban your site from their index if they
find out that your site uses cloaking.
The reason that the search engines don't like page cloaking
is that it prevents them from being able to spider the
same page that their visitors are going to see. And if
the search engines are prevented from doing so, they cannot
be confident of delivering relevant results to their users.
In the past, many people have created optimized pages
for some highly popular keywords and then used page cloaking
to take people to their real sites which had nothing to
do with those keywords. If the search engines allowed
this to happen, they would suffer because their users
would abandon them and go to another search engine which
produced more relevant results.
Of course, a question arises as to how a search engine
can detect whether or not a site uses page cloaking. There
are three ways by which it can do so:
i) If the site uses User-Agent cloaking, the search engines
can simply send a spider to a site which does not report
the name of the search engine in the User-Agent variable.
If the search engine sees that the page delivered to this
spider is different from the page which is delivered to
a spider which reports the name of the search engine in
the User-Agent variable, it knows that the site has used
page cloaking.
ii) If the site uses I.P. based cloaking, the search
engines can send a spider from a different I.P. address
than any I.P. address which it has used previously. Since
this is a new I.P. address, the I.P. database that is
used for cloaking will not contain this address. If the
search engine detects that the page delivered to the spider
with the new I.P. address is different from the page that
is delivered to a spider with a known I.P. address, it
knows that the site has used page cloaking.
iii) A human representative from a search engine may
visit a site to see whether it uses cloaking. If she sees
that the page which is delivered to her is different from
the one being delivered to the search engine spider, she
knows that the site uses cloaking.
Hence, when it comes to page cloaking, my advice is simple:
don't even think about using it.
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most
respected search engine positioning specialists on the
Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at
the top of the search engines, visit
his site.
Internet
Marketing Home
**
This is a sample of what you'll find in our Affordable,
Members-Only Area **
We offer TONS of great tips, a complete guide to Internet
Marketing, and more!
Membership to our site will allow you
access to numerous reviews on all kinds of
products and services in every category you can imagine.
Join us Today!
If you're not sure yet... be sure to Join
our newsletter for the latest announcements,
additions, and changes to our website. We never accept
"paid ads" and will never sell
your email --as we DETEST Spammers as much -if not more-
than you do! Join Below!
|
