Hi, sorry if I am being a crump, but I figure its time to define what
cloaking really is. And the use of FRAMES isn't it!
Cloaking is strictly a function of the web server and not DNS. What it
does is simple in concept. Depending on what IP and/or User Agent the
browser is coming from, the server will show a different page. Now why
would someone want to do this? Simply because SEARCH ENGINES are very
very competitive and getting a high SEARCH ENGINE rank is often allot of
work, patience and skill and perhaps more often than not simply shear luck
of the draw. What ever the reason, without any cloaking, anyone can come
in and see what your search keys, meta-tags, body text, etc and copy it.
With cloaking, only the search engine/s will see your pages designed to
get a hopefully high ranking.
As mentioned above, the two methods of detecting a search engine hit are:
1. Reading the User Agent. This method even though works well enough
and is used by most cloaking software, is easily fooled by your
competition if they know what they are doing or know someone who does.
Some search engines also don't even send a User Agent.
2. IP's are the second, but the potiential problem here is, you may not
know all the IP numbers that the web spiders are using. This system is
perhaps the most secure however from your competition.
Typically the technology is a CGI and maybe a plugin for the Apache,
although I haven't seen plug-is yet. Most of the ones I have seen are
written in PERL and require a moderate skill set to install. Once in
place, it also means creating two web sites. One for your visitors and
the other for the search engines.
Additionally, the Apache web server has the ablity to deliver different
web pages based on the type of browser. Information on this can be
obtained by reading the Apache Docs. The intent was not to fool search
engines, but allow better site designs based on the browser.
Pro's and Con's: Well basically, cheating if caught generally results in
expulsion of one sort or another. Typically it is banning your domain
from ever entering search engine spider systems again. And you probibly
won't even be told. I never recommend using cloaking on your flagship
sites. However, using poor quality domain names that mirror your flagship
site/s is a possible work around. The Pro's, notice I am putting this
last as I am a half empty kind of guy, is well, having a high search
engine ranking should be obvious to any partially net savy webmaster.
Now, with all of the above said, I do hope this clears up what CLOAKING is
and IS NOT.
Thanks,
Bob Garth
