I want to redirect the traffic from a blog to a sales page, but i dont want google to notice this redirect or I will stop receiving the organic traffic.


So this is what I had in mind
a php script to detect the user agent
if {user agent is not googlebot, use javascript function Document.Write to write a meta refresh tag} else {do nothing}

Is this a solid method? or does google have other kinds of spiders to detect this kind of cloak?

Hi, do not ever just use a user-agent to cloak, user-agents can be spoofed via browser plug-ins.

The only sure fire way to detect bots by their IP address

Regards
MDS

Don't count on that. Google doesn't crawl with just the Googlebot user agent. They use other user agents too. Cloaked content is a no-no to them.

Instead of messing with cloaking, you could either put banners on the blog that lead to the sales page, or you could use a lightbox or pop-up that invites them to check it out.

so nobody knows how to trick google?
eg. here is a guy:
http://www.leaf-project.org/
he buys expired domains for high pr links, while he redirect all his traffic to sedo landing page. how i know that? cause google show his sites as backlinks, while as surfer i can see only sedo landing page. of course there is no cached page as people could easily spot it.
would really love to know how to do that...

I have never heard of anyone tricking google crawlers with a simple redirect script, and I have worked with some guys that can make htaccess files that do everything but paint your house, if you figure out a way let me know though lol

Why not use a 'lightbox' style script so that one second after your blog page loads a lighbox appears over the page leaving the visitor no choice but to click to your sales page.

The lightbox has the advantage that it will darken the blog post content and just highlight the lightbox content instead.

Google will not know what the lightbox contains plus you will be able to keep your current blog content as is so G will not see anything different about your page.

Originally Posted by teoma

so nobody knows how to trick google?
eg. here is a guy:
http://www.leaf-project.org/
he buys expired domains for high pr links, while he redirect all his traffic to sedo landing page. how i know that? cause google show his sites as backlinks, while as surfer i can see only sedo landing page. of course there is no cached page as people could easily spot it.
would really love to know how to do that...

Tell google not to cache, then get the IPs of google. Not sure what you mean as google shows his sites as backlinks.

I'd use an approach different from redicting all IPs but google's
Redirect ONLY IPs from residential adsl, hdsl, mobile, cable connections.

this should be much more safer cloaking, but we gotta find a database of residential ips ranges

do anyone have it?

Originally Posted by shadowguy

I'd use an approach different from redicting all IPs but google's
Redirect ONLY IPs from residential adsl, hdsl, mobile, cable connections.

this should be much more safer cloaking, but we gotta find a database of residential ips ranges

do anyone have it?

i like this idea Shadowguy!!!!

tryting to trick google is like trying to talk a hungry bear out of not making you an entree... unless you know their secret user agents/ips its gonna be one heck of a bitch to beat them

I'm a newbie in BH things and I have set a little network. All my sites use a javascript to redirect people to my paying page. The problem is, lots of people disable javascript on their browsers so I don't really know if it works. It's just the beginning so I had not done this for enough time to see some speaking results I think.

In addition of that, my redirecting pages are SEO optimized for the bots, as I've heard that bots don't follow javascript redirection. So I don't really know if it will work, but maybe you can try... And if someone has an opinion about that, please tell me because I'm just a newbie.

(Sorry for my english, I'm french)

The general logic around redirects is that Google will parse and crawl obvious JS redirects, and even GET Form redirects.

They claim to respect POST redirects and meta robots directives.

That's a good idea, but compiling the database would take longer (albeit more targeted) than just single out google's ip. But then again, google changes IP too...

Originally Posted by shadowguy

I'd use an approach different from redicting all IPs but google's
Redirect ONLY IPs from residential adsl, hdsl, mobile, cable connections.

this should be much more safer cloaking, but we gotta find a database of residential ips ranges

do anyone have it?

Originally Posted by HTmonitor

I'm a newbie in BH things and I have set a little network. All my sites use a javascript to redirect people to my paying page. The problem is, lots of people disable javascript on their browsers so I don't really know if it works. It's just the beginning so I had not done this for enough time to see some speaking results I think.

(Sorry for my english, I'm french)

Well really if you think of your target audience - someone who will by a product that you are using cloaked pages to sell - will post probabally have javascript turned on - the ones who have javascript turned off will probably not be buying it anyway.

Pensez à votre public cible.
Si vous vendez un produit à des gens via pages masquée - les gens qui seront les plus Probabilité acheter le produit ne sont pas ceux qui auront le Javascript est désactivé.

Originally Posted by goawayplease

The general logic around redirects is that Google will parse and crawl obvious JS redirects, and even GET Form redirects.

They claim to respect POST redirects and meta robots directives.

Originally Posted by HTmonitor

In addition of that, my redirecting pages are SEO optimized for the bots, as I've heard that bots don't follow javascript redirection. So I don't really know if it will work, but maybe you can try... And if someone has an opinion about that, please tell me because I'm just a newbie.

I have been developing methods (in me head!) of detecting bot requests to websites.
If you study the way that different browsers request webpages - then subsequently request the contents of that page (scripts/images/css/flash etc) you can build a pretty good picture of how you would expect each page to be downloaded - and work out - if it is a *real live* webbrowser doing the downloading.

You of course would need to develop your own HTTP/1.1 webserver...

Anyone know what I am talking about? working on anythin similar?

Originally Posted by redsecond

That's a good idea, but compiling the database would take longer (albeit more targeted) than just single out google's ip. But then again, google changes IP too...

tracert when IP first connects is also possible.. Won't really need a FULL list of ranges to start off with, only the major routes.

Then you could build up ranges using the tracert information...

What about clocking the traffic coming from organic search by checking referrals, how easy for Google to find out about that??

I've toyed around with similar ideas minus the need for a custom server config.

Originally Posted by divinci

Well really if you think of your target audience - someone who will by a product that you are using cloaked pages to sell - will post probabally have javascript turned on - the ones who have javascript turned off will probably not be buying it anyway.

Pensez à votre public cible.
Si vous vendez un produit à des gens via pages masquée - les gens qui seront les plus Probabilité acheter le produit ne sont pas ceux qui auront le Javascript est désactivé.

I have been developing methods (in me head!) of detecting bot requests to websites.
If you study the way that different browsers request webpages - then subsequently request the contents of that page (scripts/images/css/flash etc) you can build a pretty good picture of how you would expect each page to be downloaded - and work out - if it is a *real live* webbrowser doing the downloading.

You

of course would need to develop your own HTTP/1.1 webserver...

Anyone know what I am talking about? working on anythin similar?