Don't cloak
by Ralph Tegtmeier
Don't cloak for Google - they don't like it! :-) However, if you must cloak for Google whatever the reason, take great care:
a) Do not to use their proprietary NOARCHIVE tag as there's been some indication recently that this may either raise a red flag or lead to proactive rank demotion.
Even if this assumption should prove to be faulty, using the tag may well work as a dead giveaway in case they do opt for a major ip delivery witchhunt some day, as well they may, at least when considering their public stance against the "bad boys of cloaking" ...
b) Of course, you'd normally want to use the NOARCHIVE tag to prevent your cloaked page to be displayed for every man and his dog to see via Google's cache function.
So in lieu of that tag you should implement a cache buster (JavaScript) on every phantom page redirecting human viewers to the target URL. Note that this won't provide you with 100% security - if someone turns off their JS functionality in their browser, they will still be able to see your cloaked page in all its glory! However, it's the next best option to being stigmatized by Google for using their own tag.
c) Finally, make dead sure you're using the very best and most comprehensive database of search engine spiders available - miss one spider, and five will give you twenty that you're out.
Not so much because they will ban you for cloaking (which happens very rarely in actual practice, much hyped as it may be) but because the spider will report the redirection and more often than not will index the unoptimized target URL instead, meaning that either your cloaked site (shadow domain) or your phantom page won't get indexed at all, which of course beats the whole point of cloaking.
At the risk of stating the obvious, we recommend our own fantomas spiderSpy(TM) botBase, available here: < http://fantomaster.com/fasvsspy01.html >
Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >, a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services.
He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: < http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html > You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com All rights reserved. Downloaded at: < http://fantomaster.com/ >
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