The Controversial Search Engine Cloaking

Search engines are what bring customers and visitors to websites – well, a large percentage of it. This is a fact all webmasters and online business owners know; thus, they all compete for a good position on the search engines.

There is no guarantee your site’s present ranking position will remain the same forever. Search engines constantly make changes in their rules and algorithm. This makes it impossible for sites to rank high always. Webmasters will do anything to keep their rank high – one method they are looking into is the search engine cloaking.

Search Engine Cloaking

Have you heard about search engine cloaking? This has been a controversial method of securing rank position on the search engines. It poses some risk but why do webmasters still want to try it?

Search engine cloaking is a divisive technique that webmasters use to get a better edge over the other million websites on the internet. This is a form of a “trick” to the search engines – that is why cloaking is very risky. What happens is that a fake page is sent to search engines’ spiders and robots. The real page, however, is sent to the actual site visitor.

Browsers can see a different page compared to the search engines’ spiders – though the same address is visited. What the spiders see is an optimized HTML page that contains all the information that the search engines need to give that site/page a higher rank. The page is specifically designed to meet the demands of the search engines. This page is not seen by any site visitor; it can only be seen by the webmaster and the search engines’ spiders. What the visitors see, if ever they visit the address, is the regular webpage – this is made possible by the cloaking technology.

How Cloaking Technology Works

The cloaking technology determines whether the IP address visiting the site’s page is a real visitor or a search engine spider. The IP address is one important aspect that makes cloaking technology work. It is the basis by which to identify the visitor as real or spider.

Since IP addresses are unique, the search engine cloaking technology compares every IP address of the visitor to the IP addresses contained in the search engines’ list of IPs. If the visiting IP is included on the list, the cloaking technology sends the optimized HTML page instead of the regular web page. However, if the IP is not included there, it sends out the regular web page for real visitors to see.

Search engine cloaking is a “trick” that will give your site and its pages a really impressive position on the search engines. But this can be risky and is meant for webmasters who wants better ranking while maintaining the willingness to accept whatever is the consequence of this trick.

Search engine cloaking can be beneficial yet it is risky. For more relevant information on how to rank high on the search engines, please see our Web Marketing Services or contact our Web Marketing Specialists.