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[W497]What Is Jail Break

by Sandeep Kumar, San

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users' browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.

According to Google cloaking is "a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site." In other words, a human reading the site would see different content or information than the Googlebot or other search engine robot reading the site. Most of the time, cloaking is implemented in order to improve search engine ranking by misleading the search engine robot into thinking the content on the page is different than it really is.

In cloaking two different set of pages are developed for the website. First set is the one that crawlers see and the other set is the one that visitors to the website can see. Thus the search engine optimized pages that might not be too visually appealing are seen only by the crawlers and those which are visually appealing remain visible to website visitors.

There are three ways of cloaking:

•IP delivery
•IP addresses of
•User-Agent delivery

Many webmasters see cloaking as a remedy for non-spiderable pages on their sites. These “problem" pages can include graphics-heavy pages, pages using Flash animations heavily, or dynamically generated pages. Unfortunately, since the search engines won’t reveal how many sites they punish for cloaking, there’s a common perception that it’s low-risk. Rhodes challenges this assumption.

Detecting Cloaking
One technique for determing if a web page is using cloaking is to view Google's cache of that web page. Unless the web page has turned off Google caching, the Google cache will show you how Googlebot sees the web page. If the web page has turned off Google caching, that is also a possible indicator that cloaking is in use.

It is also possible to set your own user agent to spoof the user agent of a well known web robot, such as Googlebot. If the web page is using user agent cloaking, you will then see the cloaked page that is normally shown to Googlebot.

In cloaking, the visitor is shown the page in a
normal mode, but the search engines are shown a
page full of contents. The contents which is not
visible for the visitor, is normally full of SPAM,
by key words, in order to reach a high position
in SERPs on those words.

Normal Cloaking
Normally, the cloaking is performed by displaying
on the same page of the contents, visible to the
visitor, and the contents visible only to the
search engines. In order to detect the use of
this technique on a page, use ctrl+a and you
should see the contents of the text, which
normally you couldn't have seen.

Cloaking after user agent
For this cloaking technique, the web server must
be able to specify if the visitor is a person or
a search engine. The result of this technique is:
when a human visitor accesses the page, the page
will be normally shown to him, and when the page
is accessed by a search engine, this one will see
a text full of key words, for which the webmaster
wants to reach the SERPs top.
A method to identify search engines when that
page is accessed is according to the domain of
the search engine or according to IPs.

A way to detect if a page uses this cloaking
method is to verify what Google has in cache for
that page. If on that page cloaking was performed
by this method, then watching in cache you should
see exactly what Google bot has seen. Another
method to detect the cloaking user agent is to
modify in the browser which you use as a user
agent, so that you should see exactly what would
normally see a search engine bot.

User Agent Switcher is an extension for Firefox
and Mozilla which allows you to change the user
agent in those browsers.

Penalties for cloaking
Cloaking represents a breaking of the rules
concerning the majority of the search engines and
in the case of detection it is possible that the
site should be banned. The search engines are not
yet very good at cloaking detection, but any
person who is bothered by these techniques can
attract the attention of the search engines,
sending a simple mail.

Article Source : Web Site Promotion Uk

About Author

Both Sandeep Kumar & Ashish K Arora are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Sandeep Kumar has sinced written about articles on various topics from Finances, Computers and The Internet and Advertising Guide. Sandeep kumarSEO Executivesandeep.srivastava@mobilex.in For more details on. Sandeep Kumar's top article generates over 18100 views. Bookmark Sandeep Kumar to your Favourites.

Ashish K Arora has sinced written about articles on various topics from Dog Grooming, Site Promotion. Ashish K. Arora : Passion For SEO. Ashish K Arora's top article generates over 1300 views. Bookmark Ashish K Arora to your Favourites.