What is Cloaking?
- Thread starter sam2009
- Start date
TermsB
Senior Member
- May 19, 2009
- 1,078
- 741
SuiteTieLies
Registered Member
- May 19, 2009
- 70
- 16
Spiders (like googlebot) see one thing and your human viewers see another. You feed two different results from your server so could spam the crud out of a page to show up in the so called natural search for a term while the human viewer never sees the bloated seo listing.
It allows you to show up higher in the natural search than you otherwise would and if you are caught could get you banned.
It allows you to show up higher in the natural search than you otherwise would and if you are caught could get you banned.
qcp860
Regular Member
- Dec 16, 2008
- 259
- 85
This statement is patently incorrect
>> It allows you to show up higher in the natural search than you otherwise
Cloaking is showing one set of visitors one piece of content and another set of visitors other content.
The classic example of this is to show search engine spiders one thing and human visitors another. For example, search engine spiders see an article and humans see an affiliate offer.
Cloaking DOES NOT by itself improve your ranking over organic seo. Cloaking is a way to get traffic to your offers. It doesn't necessarily improve rankings.
It's true that the page shown to a search engine spider usually has a keyword rich title tag, an ok meta description, and a reasonable amount of content.
BUT.. you would do this anyway if you were a white hat SEO making a page for that keyword. Again, cloaking is not a ranking technique per se.
Linking in its various forms improves ranking.
What cloaking can do is funnel lots of traffic to your offers efficiently.
Now, there are multiple ways to detect and separate one set of visitors from another. When people speak of cloaking this is part of what they mean.
You can identify search engine spiders for example by user agent, IP address, or reverse DNS lookup.
You can identify visitors to your page by soming from Google or Yahoo or Bing's search engine using the HTTP referrer.
You can identify visitors from a specific zip/postal code using GEOIP detection based on the IP address.
You can identify people that click on an Adwords ad to get to your page vs. any other means using the HTTP referrer.
You can identify people who have their browser language set to spanish using the HTTP language code (and show them a page in spanish).
Make sense? As you see, some uses of cloaking make some white hat sense. Others are more aggressive and blackhat.
>> It allows you to show up higher in the natural search than you otherwise
Cloaking is showing one set of visitors one piece of content and another set of visitors other content.
The classic example of this is to show search engine spiders one thing and human visitors another. For example, search engine spiders see an article and humans see an affiliate offer.
Cloaking DOES NOT by itself improve your ranking over organic seo. Cloaking is a way to get traffic to your offers. It doesn't necessarily improve rankings.
It's true that the page shown to a search engine spider usually has a keyword rich title tag, an ok meta description, and a reasonable amount of content.
BUT.. you would do this anyway if you were a white hat SEO making a page for that keyword. Again, cloaking is not a ranking technique per se.
Linking in its various forms improves ranking.
What cloaking can do is funnel lots of traffic to your offers efficiently.
Now, there are multiple ways to detect and separate one set of visitors from another. When people speak of cloaking this is part of what they mean.
You can identify search engine spiders for example by user agent, IP address, or reverse DNS lookup.
You can identify visitors to your page by soming from Google or Yahoo or Bing's search engine using the HTTP referrer.
You can identify visitors from a specific zip/postal code using GEOIP detection based on the IP address.
You can identify people that click on an Adwords ad to get to your page vs. any other means using the HTTP referrer.
You can identify people who have their browser language set to spanish using the HTTP language code (and show them a page in spanish).
Make sense? As you see, some uses of cloaking make some white hat sense. Others are more aggressive and blackhat.
a n o n y m o u s
Registered Member
- Sep 14, 2008
- 78
- 219
Basically the way cloaking works is this:
Every time you go to a webpage, information is sent, called an agent string, to define who you are, what web browser youre using (internet explorer, firefox, etc). Now there is also a unique address sent called an IP Address. The best way to describe an ip address is like a telephone number, every computer has one that is unique, and currently it is 9 digits in the format of ###.###.### , an example would be 46.14.38 .. ..
anyways there are also these things called spiders that search engines have. The spiders are what determine your ranking and other stuff on search engines. They grab the stuff from your website and determine how good the site is, and how related it is to your keyword.
Now if each time a request is made it has a special IP or agent string that has googlebot in it, we know that it's a google bot and can trick it using cloaking. If we can determine it is a bot it is sent a certain webpage. If it is not a googlebot , to be determined by ip address or the agent string sent, we can return something entirely different.
If you can trick the bots into thinking that there are a ton of valid webpages with good content and have them index these pages you can win. The reason you win is that when a bot crawls over these pages your information is seen differently. Where the other page that users see ( based on ip or agent string) are re-directed to a main website or presented with a "real" article and adsense stuff (most likely it will redirect the user to another website). This is cloaking.
The basic method is that search engines use spiders that crawl pages, if you send different information to these spiders based on ip or agent string, they see your site as having X amount of pages, and give it Y ranking. Each user, (determined by ip or agent string) is redirected to your main website. It is dynamic meaning it changes depending on each user that requests a page. Try to think of it as a conversation between a bot and a website. Aka:
My Site: "How are you?"
if Google Bot: "Great! Ill Grab your content"
if internet explorer user : "Not good! Ill take you to this website"
Some cloaking basic are to have a unique template, get backlinks (i wouldn't get more than 3 a day)... and invest heavily in your cloaking software (whether its mentally from you programming it, or monetary in you buying it).. Have good, reliable hosting, and be patient.
Every time you go to a webpage, information is sent, called an agent string, to define who you are, what web browser youre using (internet explorer, firefox, etc). Now there is also a unique address sent called an IP Address. The best way to describe an ip address is like a telephone number, every computer has one that is unique, and currently it is 9 digits in the format of ###.###.### , an example would be 46.14.38 .. ..
anyways there are also these things called spiders that search engines have. The spiders are what determine your ranking and other stuff on search engines. They grab the stuff from your website and determine how good the site is, and how related it is to your keyword.
Now if each time a request is made it has a special IP or agent string that has googlebot in it, we know that it's a google bot and can trick it using cloaking. If we can determine it is a bot it is sent a certain webpage. If it is not a googlebot , to be determined by ip address or the agent string sent, we can return something entirely different.
If you can trick the bots into thinking that there are a ton of valid webpages with good content and have them index these pages you can win. The reason you win is that when a bot crawls over these pages your information is seen differently. Where the other page that users see ( based on ip or agent string) are re-directed to a main website or presented with a "real" article and adsense stuff (most likely it will redirect the user to another website). This is cloaking.
The basic method is that search engines use spiders that crawl pages, if you send different information to these spiders based on ip or agent string, they see your site as having X amount of pages, and give it Y ranking. Each user, (determined by ip or agent string) is redirected to your main website. It is dynamic meaning it changes depending on each user that requests a page. Try to think of it as a conversation between a bot and a website. Aka:
My Site: "How are you?"
if Google Bot: "Great! Ill Grab your content"
if internet explorer user : "Not good! Ill take you to this website"
Some cloaking basic are to have a unique template, get backlinks (i wouldn't get more than 3 a day)... and invest heavily in your cloaking software (whether its mentally from you programming it, or monetary in you buying it).. Have good, reliable hosting, and be patient.
xhpdx
Regular Member
- Sep 21, 2008
- 326
- 2,172
i wouldn't see it is illegal, but google guidelines says
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
i haven't done any cloaking so i can't say how risky is
needlinks
Regular Member
- Jul 21, 2008
- 210
- 327
coolkid123
Power Member
- May 21, 2009
- 563
- 685
Isn't There A Thread Explaining Cloaking, Only Do Cloaking If You Fully Know What Your Facing
keith6andco
Regular Member
- Apr 12, 2009
- 318
- 440
You cloak your affiliate links so your commissions dont get wiped - eg:
Standard link looks like this: h**p://yourdomain name.com
Affiliate Link looks like this: XYZ your Affiliate ID.Hop.clickbank.net?/ hop = Tom (or whatever)
If I dont like the idea of someone else taking a cut of the purchase price, or, if I want to get the commission myself - I simply either chop your ID out of the url and insert my own affiliate link (after I created one with clickbank), prior to going to the payment page, or I clear my cookies and go back to the DOMAIN NAME.com.
When I want something cheap off clickbank I buy it through my own affiliate link and collect the affiliate commision (effectively this is recieving the goods at a discounted price equal to the amount of commission I would collect as an affiliate
This only works with click bank as far as I know - I may be wrong
A CLOAKED LINK takes the searcher through to the payment page without the affiliate link appearing in the navigation bar of the browser - it normally looks like this : h**p://yourdomainname.com/recommends (or Likes/ product name
eg: h**p://keith6andco.com/recommends/Blackhatworld.com
or
H**p://blackhatworld.com
Here is a GREAT cloaker which, if you read the page, explains EVERYTHING
Sales Page
Product: (on my site for YOU )
Regards
Hope this helps
Standard link looks like this: h**p://yourdomain name.com
Affiliate Link looks like this: XYZ your Affiliate ID.Hop.clickbank.net?/ hop = Tom (or whatever)
If I dont like the idea of someone else taking a cut of the purchase price, or, if I want to get the commission myself - I simply either chop your ID out of the url and insert my own affiliate link (after I created one with clickbank), prior to going to the payment page, or I clear my cookies and go back to the DOMAIN NAME.com.
When I want something cheap off clickbank I buy it through my own affiliate link and collect the affiliate commision (effectively this is recieving the goods at a discounted price equal to the amount of commission I would collect as an affiliate
This only works with click bank as far as I know - I may be wrong
A CLOAKED LINK takes the searcher through to the payment page without the affiliate link appearing in the navigation bar of the browser - it normally looks like this : h**p://yourdomainname.com/recommends (or Likes/ product name
eg: h**p://keith6andco.com/recommends/Blackhatworld.com
or
H**p://blackhatworld.com
Here is a GREAT cloaker which, if you read the page, explains EVERYTHING
Sales Page
Code:
http://www.samuraistealthcloaker.com/ssc/Product: (on my site for YOU )
Code:
http://www.e-bizmentor.com/Samurai Stealth Cloaker.zipRegards
Hope this helps
Last edited:
SuiteTieLies
Registered Member
- May 19, 2009
- 70
- 16
Re-Cloaking DOES NOT by itself improve your ranking over organic seo. Cloaking is a way to get traffic to your offers. It doesn't necessarily improve rankings.
Uhhhh-Yea. Since you are incorrectly correcting my post by stating it is patently incorrect lets expand your concept of cloaking.
You are only speaking of cloaking on your own main site but as I said it can increase your google ranking specifically - if you cloak links to you primary site pages that also have an extension of your preferred keyword on external sites that hopefully sit in the back end of some high ranking site already. If you use a very highly accepted traffic term in your cloaked page and your target keyword in your link you can confuse google by association and get very high relevance for a term you otherwise would not show for.
There are levels and variations and this isnt a guide but I think you get it.
I have a question regarding cloaking and didn't want to make a new thread:
What is the best cloaking service out there (preferably free) such as tinyurl but that has more features like being able to disable/enable the link at will and/or automatically?
Thanks.
What is the best cloaking service out there (preferably free) such as tinyurl but that has more features like being able to disable/enable the link at will and/or automatically?
Thanks.
spatel6549
Newbie
- Jun 4, 2009
- 45
- 3
tinyurl is good
dannyhw
Senior Member
- Jul 16, 2008
- 979
- 476
http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/googlebot-spoofer/
Won't allow you to see through ALL cloaking methods, but user agent based cloaking yes.
Won't allow you to see through ALL cloaking methods, but user agent based cloaking yes.