Search Engines, To Cloak or Not to Cloak


by ANIRBAN BHATTACHARYA - Date: 2009-03-16 - Word Count: 329 Share This!

The Cambridge Dictionary defines Cloak as something which hides or covers something. In web terminology, cloaking is a stealth technique used by some sites to deliver one page to a search engine to achieve higher rankings and a completely different page to a human visitor. The content presented to a search engine spider differs completely for the content presented to the user's browser. It is a black hat search engine optimization technique employed by any web site promotion firm aiming to deceive search engines so that they display the page, which would, otherwise, would not be displayed.

The actual purpose of cloaking is to hide content from search engines. But, proponents of cloaking technique argue that they are presenting something different to a search engine than hiding content. But the purpose is the same, the page presented to the anticipated visitor is different that he one presented to the search engine.
There are two main reasons to cloak:
Increase the search ranking
Protect pages from other search engine optimization firms for competitive purpose
Actually, the ratings game plays an important part in applying cloaking technique. A web site promotion firm dedicates a lot of time and money creating an optimized page with a hope to rank higher in search engines. But, sometimes in an effort to gain competitive edge, a web promotional specialist employs cloaking technique for gaining quick rankings and protecting affordable search engine optimization methods from other search engine optimization firm. This may ensure increase in traffic, but that doesn't guarantee any loyal visitors. If the visitor finds something else on the web page than what is displayed in the search engine results page, chances of his returning to the site are remote.
To cloak or not to cloak, that is the question you may be surrounded with. But, a web promotion specialist generally does not employ this technique. An affordable web promotion expert concentrates on good content and follows search engine guidelines to be competitive.


Related Tags: search engine optimization firm, affordable search engine optimization, affordable web promotion, web promotion specialist, web site promotion firm

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: