Which type of cloaking are they using?

[Thunder Digitals]

Hey,

My client's competitors are using some kind of cloaking to disguise themselves as a normal website but they actually ranking for tough Casino keywords.

In the desktop version, websites look

like this:


In the mobile version, websites look like this:



So how can I cloak like them too?

@Steptoe @hideath I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thank you.

 

[Steptoe]

Well from the screenshots and limited information given, it will be a combination of IP and useragent cloaking. There is not enough information for any further analysis, and if they're ranking for tough casino keywords there is probably much more going on.

 

[Thunder Digitals]

Well from the screenshots and limited information given, it will be a combination of IP and useragent cloaking.

How someone can actually do that?

There is not enough information for any further analysis, and if they're ranking for tough casino keywords there is probably much more going on.

Yes, there is so much going on. They are building websites on expired domains, cloaking them for desktop users, showing the real casino site to mobile users, and then blasting them hundreds of thousands of backlinks. Most of them are footers (Maybe that's why semrush shows thousands of links while there are only 100-150 referring domains) which they have also hidden from plain sight. When you check the page source, and search your keyword, there you will find competitor sites with many others.

So is there some way to find the owner of these networks and ask them to put our link too? If we can find any footprint of these networks.

 

[hideath]

@Thunder Digitals, thanks for the mention ^^
But I don't get involved with BH niches, sorry

 

[saferidge]

Some show a clean version to Google while serving casino content to real users, but it’s risky. Google can penalize them if they get caught or reported.

 

[Thunder Digitals]

@Thunder Digitals, thanks for the mention ^^
But I don't get involved with BH niches, sorry

No worries. Thank you.

Some show a clean version to Google while serving casino content to real users, but it’s risky. Google can penalize them if they get caught or reported.

How to show the clean version to Google?

 

[GoogSEO]

No worries. Thank you.

How to show the clean version to Google?

If you are asking such a question, it is too early for you to get into this topic.
It's just a simple task to show one content on ASNs owned by Google and other undesirable companies, and split others into mobile and others and show them other content.

 

[domainmadness]

No worries. Thank you.

How to show the clean version to Google?

But from what I understand, they are actually showing the non-clean version to Google, if they are ranking for casino keywords, right?

So to me this sounds they are cloaking it from the backlinking sites. Are those sites backlinking them (likely) normal websites controlled by different entities? Maybe they are purchasing links from network which doesn't allow links to casino, or requires higher pricing for casino links.

Anyway, if they are just showing different content for mobile/desktop users, that's pretty easy for you to achieve. This could work if they know that the network who sells the links checks with desktop device, but Google index with mobile crawler.

If it's some more elaborate cloaking, you'd need googlebot IP list (updated) and a script to do that. There's probably some tools for it, but no idea how well those works 2025.

 

[Thunder Digitals]

So to me this sounds they are cloaking it from the backlinking sites. Are those sites backlinking them (likely) normal websites controlled by different entities? Maybe they are purchasing links from network which doesn't allow links to casino, or requires higher pricing for casino links.

They are building footer backlinks and hiding them from plain sight. But when you check their page source and search for your competitor's backlink, you will find it in the footer with many others with this tag

<div style="display:none;">

.

They are doing hack links or buying from a network that hides backlinks on their sites, That's what I understand.

 

[domainmadness]

They are building footer backlinks and hiding them from plain sight. But when you check their page source and search for your competitor's backlink, you will find it in the footer with many others with this tag

<div style="display:none;">

.

They are doing hack links or buying from a network that hides backlinks on their sites, That's what I understand.

Yeah, could be hacked links. There used to be some russian networks selling these kind of links and they were all the rage back then.

 

[Apate]

are u find anything about that method?