Can someone explain what cloaking is exactly?

A

AutomationSorcerer

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The last time I heard this term used, it was in reference to websites returning one page for search engine crawlers; and another thing for anyone who clicks the link.

If that is what cloaking refers to here, I had a lot of ideas at the time as far as implementation/anti-detection goes; but never cared enough to actually develop any sites to test the ideas.

If that isn't what cloaking refers to here, what does it refer to?
 
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1. +respect for using lmgtfy.
2. It appears my current understanding is correct.

By specific IPs, are you referring to subnet based filtering of requests (similar to how websites redirect to localized versions of their site based on IP); or something else entirely?

I have a background in networking/software development; not SEO, so it's hard for me to understand why Cloaking needs it's own forum when it's a rather simple problem solved primarily through technical/configuration based means.
 
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AutomationSorcerer said:
1. +respect for using lmgtfy.
2. It appears my current understanding is correct.

By specific IPs, are you referring to subnet based filtering of requests (similar to how websites redirect to localized versions of their site based on IP); or something else entirely?

I have a background in networking/software development; not SEO, so it's hard for me to understand why Cloaking needs it's own forum when it's a rather simple problem solved primarily through technical/configuration based means.
Click to expand...

By specific IPs I mean you tell the software (or whatever it is that does the cloaking) that if someone has xxx.yyy.xxx.zzz IP show them a picture of a apple and not the real content on your website.
 
Cloaking is one of those terms in internet marketing that has multiple meanings.It's most ‘generic' or broad meaning would be the act of hiding or changing an element of a webpage from a third party.

Typically speaking there are three different segments of cloaking that are commonly practiced. They vary from something that is fairly innocent to completely blackhat.
 
william19510 said:
Cloaking is one of those terms in internet marketing that has multiple meanings.It's most ‘generic' or broad meaning would be the act of hiding or changing an element of a webpage from a third party.Typically speaking there are three different segments of cloaking that are commonly practiced. They vary from something that is fairly innocent to completely blackhat.
Click to expand...
completely blackhat is how we do it :)
 
So I'm assuming these crawlers aren't always forthcoming with their user-agents, or there is a human review process of some sort that causes issues hence the need to filter any subnet owned by the company and any affiliates that would go to your site?

Assuming their web crawlers aren't always identifying themselves properly in the user-agent, there should still be ways to identify them in the same way fingerprinting works; through types of headers sent + values or how they respond to various response headers; TCP/IP stack fingerprinting of confirmed crawlers to assist in identifying unconfirmed; lookup of an IP address and filter all commercial IP blocks (to prevent them from hiring 3rd party reviewers); etc.

Unless of course they're using human reviewers that are connected through a residential internet service, or you just have to be able to reach people at their office, should get a pretty good success rate with the above.

Am I missing something?
 
Exactly the cloaking means the "stealth". It is used to deliver one page of a website to the search engine.

Thank you.
 
If they are using RDSL, you have to keep an updated RDSL ip list from different providers and your code needs to self-protect across your cloaked sites so if a breach occurs somewhere in the network your other cloaked sites aren't affected.

Millions of breach points, but cloakers have to build a historical database of breach points and patterns then use machine learning to learn what behavior they were using.

Automated is going to be different than manual reviewers.

Cat and mouse at its finest.
 
Cloaking is Also known as stealth, a technique used by some Web sites to deliver one page to a search engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to everyone else. There are opposing views as to whether or not cloaking is ethical. Opponents see it as a bait-and-switch, where a Web server is scripted to look out for search engines that are spidering in order to create an index of search results. The search engine thinks it is selecting a prime match to its request based on the meta tags that the site administrator has input. However, the search result is misleading because the meta tags do not correspond to what actually exists on the page. Some search engines, such as Lycos, Hotbot and Excite, even ban cloaked Web sites. Proponents of cloaking assert that cloaking is necessary in order to protect the meta data, as only the spider is supplied with the meta tags.
 
abbeywil said:
Cloaking is Also known as stealth, a technique used by some Web sites to deliver one page to a search engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to everyone else. There are opposing views as to whether or not cloaking is ethical. Opponents see it as a bait-and-switch, where a Web server is scripted to look out for search engines that are spidering in order to create an index of search results. The search engine thinks it is selecting a prime match to its request based on the meta tags that the site administrator has input. However, the search result is misleading because the meta tags do not correspond to what actually exists on the page. Some search engines, such as Lycos, Hotbot and Excite, even ban cloaked Web sites. Proponents of cloaking assert that cloaking is necessary in order to protect the meta data, as only the spider is supplied with the meta tags.
Click to expand...

Nicely copied and pasted from Webopedia
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloaking.html

Thanks for bumping yet another dead cloaking thread, are you trying to wake up Ralph?
 
Cloaking is a technique in which there are two pages.

Reviewers gets to see the safe page.

Visitors get to see the money page.

As reviewers can't see your money page, they'll approve anything you put there.

 
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