What is Cloaking?

[jaimehopkin]

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's 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, or that is present but not searchable.

The purpose of cloaking is sometimes to deceive search engines. so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed (black hat SEO).

[abhirampathak3]

According to Google cloaking is a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site. Most search engines will immediately remove and sometimes blacklist a site that is discovered to be cloaking. They do this because cloaking is usually intended to completely fool the search engine's algorithms and programming that determine what makes a site rank high or low in that engine. If the page that the customer sees is different from the page that the search engine bot sees, then the search engine cannot do its job. So they ban sites that use cloaking.

[jaysh4922]

Cloaking is considered a black hat form of SEO designed to trick search engine crawlers into boosting a web page's search results ranking.

[guptaabhijit318]

Cloaking usually means to present different version of web page contents from of search engines to search robots and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address.

[annaonweb]

Clocking is a part of black hat SEO and not good because it increase bouncing rate of your site . And google can be notice it as spam.

[petersmith5544]

Cloaking is an artificial methods used for boosting rankings and many a time website are penalized by search engine doing this activity.

[Ferragus]

Cloaking usually means to present different version of web page contents from of search engines to search robots and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address.

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[arindamdutta16]

Cloaking is another sleight-of-hand SEO technique. For SEO purposes, cloaking a site is a method of delivering a page based on who is requesting the page. For example, if a web site is using cloaking, when a regular visitor comes to the site, that visitor will see one page. But when a search crawler comes to the site, it sees a much more relevant, better optimized site.

[annaonweb]

Cloaking is a recipe of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to maybe list here and some of them are still undetectable by the Google.

[ryansmith]

Cloaking is another part of black hat seo which means to get instant traffic but it is not good to any website health. Google can easily find this and mark as spam.

[mickeyy]

Just want to point out another cloaking trick on on-page keyword stuffing that is not recommended. In this method, the url/keyword is hidden in the same color of the background to make it "cloak" or invisible. This was used to fool S.E.'s that the page was very relevant to those keyword/url's.

With Google's latest Panda and Penguin updates, the search engines can now detect this trickery and your site could be penalized.

[RichardSmith]

Hello Friends,

According to me Cloaking is normally means to present different version of web page contents from of search engines to search robots and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address. It is a deceptive technique used to cheat search engines in order to rank well for desired keywords.

[semaphore.v]

cloaking is also used to trick users to visit certain websites based on their description in search engines. For example a user searching for some product may click on a website in search engine based on its description and title but the final website will not be the one described in SERP's. It will be a totally different one. Therefore, these practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines should be avoided.

[pwhrita]

Cloaking is black hat SEO it show some different URL when your search something on search engine.

[brainpulse]

A Black hat SEO technique where the content provided to the search engine spider is different from the information displayed to the user’s browser.