Unethical SEO Practices: Cloaking

What is cloaking and why is it unethical? These and other questions will be addressed below.

Also known as “stealth” and “IP redirection”, cloaking is a technique that involves serving one set of information to known search engine spiders while displaying a different set of information on documents viewed by clients. While there may be unique situations in which the use of cloaking might be considered ethical, such as redirection from a site now obsolete, it is never required and should always be handled with extreme care. Before you take on any new strategy, you should always ask yourself, “Is this the right thing to do?” (Even when dollars coming in make you want to look the other way, you must always ask the question because the answer will never steer you wrong.)

Why is cloaking unethical? For one thing, it frustrates the web surfer in search of a particular service or product. As such, the pages that are indexed by the search engine are NOT the pages that the search engines return to the user. This practice also completely undermines the search engine’s attempt to do a legitimate search for the user. It is possible that the two pages may be very similar and that no great harm will be done, but this technique is still often abused. Another reason to avoid cloaking is that it can get you banned from the major search engines.

So think twice and better yet, thrice, the next time some new scheme about cloaking or any other unethical SEO practices is brought to your attention. Find a reputable web services provider and more important, DON”T DO IT!