Is
cloaking evil? It's one of the most heavily debated topics in the SEO industry
-- and people
often
can't even agree on what defines cloaking. In this column, I wanted to look at
an example of what even the search engines might consider "good" cloaking, the
middle-ground territory that page testing introduces plus revisiting how to
detect when "evil" old-school page cloaking is happening.
Back in December 2005, the four major engines went on record at Search Engine Strategies Chicago to define the line between cloaking for good and for evil. From the audience, I asked the panelists if it was acceptable to -- selectively for spiders -- replace search engine unfriendly links (such as those with session IDs and superfluous parameters) with search engine friendly versions. All four panelists responded "No problem." Charles Martin from Google even jumped in again with an enthusiastic, "Please do that!"
Is
cloaking evil? It’s one of the most heavily debated topics in the SEO industry
— and people
often
can’t even agree on what defines cloaking. In this column, I wanted to look at
an example of what even the search engines might consider "good" cloaking, the
middle-ground territory that page testing introduces plus revisiting how to
detect when "evil" old-school page cloaking is happening.
Back in December 2005, the four major engines
went on record at Search Engine Strategies Chicago to define the line
between cloaking for good and for evil. From the audience, I asked the panelists
if it was acceptable to — selectively for spiders — replace search engine
unfriendly links (such as those with session IDs and superfluous parameters)
with search engine friendly versions. All four panelists responded "No problem."
Charles Martin from Google even jumped in again with an enthusiastic, "Please do
that!"
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