I had an idea that I wanted to see what people think of it. I'm optimizing a site that is already built w/ very generic file naming and directory structure. In other words, I don't have directories or file names that intentionally have keywords in them. For the most part, its just a lot of index.php and one-word names.

So now I'm trying to figure out a way to get some keyword URL's in there w/o trashing my directory structure.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Let's say I have a link already in the page that goes to index.php. What if I changed the link to keyword_term.php, then I put the following code in keyword_term.php:

<?php
$no_spider = "TRUE";
include "index.php";
?>

index.php would then have this in the header:

<?php
if ($no_spider = "TRUE") {
echo "<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">";
}
?>

I know it seems like more work than its worth, but the idea is that in the long run, I can optimize multiple pages for different keywords, while requiring little maintanence if I decide to edit the original index.php. I'm also using the $no_spider variable to aviod being penalized for duplicate content. My intention is not to get index.php indexed multiple times, just to allow other pages to link to it using different file names.

Assuming I do understand you correctly. That's cloaking.

Cloaking is a so called "black hat" tactic.

My advice would be to drop the idea entirely, file names are a very small part of it, just concentrate on the anchor text ;-)

Alternatively, you could do exactly what you're doing, and call it IP Delivery (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=2895#post2895) hehe ;)

Nick

Personally, I prefer "IP Delivery" :)

But I'm not sure its either of those. On the browser side, what it looks like is two identical files. The only two differences are that they have different file names, and one has "noindex,nofollow" while the other has "index,follow"

If you want to see what I mean, you can go to my site and look at the main page. Then click on "home" in the top right hand corner. Its a copy, but with "noindex,nofollow"

Well, no matter how you justify it, it's still cloaking.

Personally I have no problem with it, though I doubt highly if it'll have any reasonable effect.

The SE's tend to see cloaking a different way though. The choice is yours ;-)

Nick

Seems similar to using mod rewrite for URLs. Not sure what the spiders would do with that. Only thing you can do is test it.

I know very little about cloaking, but I wonder with this example . . .

When I'm in Mexico (and it applies to other countries too) and I type in:

www.google.com --------> and it serves me www.google.com.mx

or

www.yahoo.com ---------> and it serves me www.yahoo.com.mx

Isn't that cloaking??? If it is, then is it "black hat" or are the search engines doing this for a good purpose? If it is a good purpose, then why do they call this "black hat"?

I had a very good conversation about this with one of the mayor search engines and he said, "when we see cloaking it automatically triggers the site for review before it gets into our index, if we see that it is used ethically for a good purpose because of the site's code not helping the cause (ie. flash content) then we will allow it. However we recommend webmasters to use alternative or normal methods (ie. HTML) so that their site can be added with no further delays." After hearing this, my recommendation of course is avoid it unless you have a very good reason to do it.

If you want fresh keyword related content on each page for your typical on page factors (title, meta tags, <h1>, etc.), you should build a MySQL database with what you want and the call for it on the PHP code. You will get the same results and avoid a cloaking technique.

Hi Nacho, If you talk to a Google engineer, they would tell you that is not cloaking, but it's a form of content delivery. All Google is doing is detecting 'your' user agent and displaying that region/country page that pertains.

Cloaking is always spam. It's the detection of a spider/robot for the purpose of showing that robot a different page than any other user agent might see. IE: a browser. It's purpose is to achieve a better rank than the page might normally get if the robot and the browser see the very same page. Cloaking is spam. Content delivery has many different forms. Of course, the different forms of content delivery could be spam or might not be spam. But actual cloaking is always spam.

If you have a website in flash, you can detect the user agent of whatever is requesting a page of your server, and if that "agent" does not have flash installed, you can serve up a page of straight html with 'no' flash. That's just plain old content delivery as well. It's not cloaking.

You can verify the above by asking an actual Google engineer about this post if you wish. The major search engines do "not" cloak. They only practice content delivery for obvious reasons.

Thank you for helping me IHelpYou! Your explanation is very appreciated. Now I understand better the difference between cloaking and content delivery.

Saludos!

It could be expressed in even broader terms: It's the purpose that makes the difference.

Cloaking is done to deliver content to the search engines only to rank well. When the same technology is used for other resons - for example GEO-targeting of content, profiling, personalization etc. it is not cloaking - the purpose is to give users a better experience. It's the purpose that makes the difference.

Anyone working with cloaking knows it's a risky business. For many it is not worth that risk or the efforts it takes to limit potential damage. However, just as I do not recomomend that you do engage in cloaking (especially if you are not 110% aware of what you jump into) I think it's fair to say that none of the major search engines have cloaking detection systems in place that really works. It dosen't take a great deal of research to find tons of cloaking material in all major engines but in most case it just dosn't mess up search results bad enough to bother the engines.

I know the search engine engineers like to brag about their automatic cloaking detection systems - and please let them, but as far as I can see they do not work too well right now :) ... but who knows, they may one day ...

littleman once said that if you can't write a cloaking script then cloaking ain't for you, I think that is good advice.

With the advent of "trusted" feeds to an extent the need for traditional cloaking has become less.

It may just be me but I find it instructive to note that some search engines accept that delivering bespoke content to different users may in fact be a good thing. Some want you to pay for it, with others its a question of who you know.

To answer the original question, I agree with the original poster "I know it seems like more work than its worth" is the correct answer.

Cloaking is always spam. ..... you can detect the user agent ... That's just plain old content delivery

You truly have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to this subject. Delivering content according to any HEADER information (UA, IP, Referer, other more obscure header info which most logs do not record) is by definition cloaking.

Here is a short list of many sites that use this technique:
CNN
Webmasterworld
The New York Times
Google
Yahoo
Ebay
...and many, many others.

Are those "evil blackhat' websites?


Nacho
Do you consider yourself a professional optimizer? You better get an understanding of what this stuff means.

I still say what NFFC said above, you better know what you are doing before employing cloaking. Fact is, it is not a level playing field and if a mom and pop did what these big sites get away with they would likely get slapped.


Don't ask a 'whitehat' what cloaking is.

No. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Cloaking is "one" form of "content delivery". There are many forms of content delivery that are not spam, but could be spam. Cloaking itself is always spam.

Those sites are "not" cloaking that you point out. They are simply using a form of content delivery.

Cloaking is "ONE" form of content delivery and that form is always spam.

Definition of cloaking:

To deceive. Cloaking is deceiving the search engine spiders by showing a spider one thing and a browser another thing. Cloaking is always spam.

Why don't we refer to what the definition of cloaking means? What's so hard about that?

You say "Google cloaks".

I say Google performs a detection of the region/country of the browser, and sends that browser to the correct page accordingly. Simple form of content delivery. Not spam and certainly:

NOT cloaking.

Is Google deceiving anything or anyone by doing that? Certainly not.

Cloaking is "always" spam. Cloaking is the deceiving of a search engine spider.

Let's talk about cloaking by using the word's 'rightful' definition, and quit trying to obscure and blur the lines by saying ALL forms of content delivery are cloaking.

That's plain silly.

Where did that definition come from?

All forms of content delivery which varies depending on header information is cloaking, that is what cloaking is. I think we are on different planets.

Why is cloaking called "cloaking"? The word refers to the verb "to cloak" which is defined (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cloaking) as "To cover or conceal with or as if with a cloak." To conceal. Hide.

What is Google hiding when it serves up a country-specific version of itself to a user at an IP address that indicates that they're in that country?

For the sake of clarity, why not just use the general term "content delivery" to describe any changes from the norm in the server's response to header information, and "cloaking" to describe the subset of such changes which involve hiding something from some particular user agent?

Hi Littleman, Your definition is comes straight from here:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/glossary/cloaking.htm

That is most confusing and why this stuff that is said like:

Google Cloaks!
Yahoo Cloaks!

and on and on and on, is just plain wrong.

Let's use the "real" definition of cloaking as it's very easy and very cut and dry.

Let's see. At the top you have:

Content Delivery

Now you have subsets of content delivery or "forms" of content delivery:

1. Detecting a user agent and sending a browser to a page based on what type of user agent you are detecting. It could be a search engine spider. It could be an agent with some kind of "disability" as in an agent that does not have "flash" installed. So you send that agent to a page of html instead of flash.

A reason that this form of content delivery could be spam, BUT might not be spam, is because you could be detecting a user agent, and sending that request to a page that is spam and not depicting what the reality is of the page a browser would see.

2. IP Delivery - You are detecting the IP of the agent requesting a page and sending that agent to a page based on region, country, or many other things.

One reason this form of content delivery might be spam is if you are "strictly" detecting the IP of Google or some other search engine, and sending that agent to a page only used to "rank" higher than the page a browser would see.

So, IP delivery "could" be spam, and it might not be spam.

3. Cloaking - Detecting a search engine spider's IP and sending that spider to a page for ranking purposes. This page is different from what a browser or any other type of agent will see. This is pure spam all the time. Not just some of the time.

I hope this is clear. I know others could make it clearer. :)

Do you consider yourself a professional optimizer? You better get an understanding of what this stuff means.
Do I need to be an expert at this "stuff" to be a professional optimizer? Why should I? I know enough about it to know it's too risky for my clients to be exposed and loose my long term relationship. I have not needed to take that route to this date, and when I do, I'll make my decision then. One option could be turning down the client.

Quick analogy: If a commercial airlines pilot does not know how to fly a stealth fighter jet, is he not considered a professional pilot?

SEO is more about hard work and dedication, than rocket science.

Thank you for helping me learn more about this risky stuff. :)

I had a very good conversation about this with one of the mayor search engines and he said, "when we see cloaking it automatically triggers the site for review before it gets into our index, if we see that it is used ethically for a good purpose because of the site's code not helping the cause (ie. flash content) then we will allow it. However we recommend webmasters to use alternative or normal methods (ie. HTML) so that their site can be added with no further delays."

The s/e person did not call "cloaking' for flash sites content delivery, he called it cloaking.

"Content delivery" is a coined phrase. Are there any references to documents or resources where search engines have called anything content delivery rather than cloaking? I've always seen them use the word cloaking when referring to delivering different results based on IP or user agent.

Delivering other content for flash sites could have been referred by the party as content delivery, but it was not. The word cloaking was used because cloaking is what it is - delivering a different page based on a given criteria.

Whatever the origin of the coined phrase "content delivery" (wonder what the source is?), much as some try, it has not reached any acceptance level outside of a certain circle, and there's been no evidence yet of search engines adopting the phrase. If they have, I'd like to see some documentation that they call cloaking anything other than cloaking.

Yes, the word is used in a general sense because it's simply another way to confuse and obscure the SEM industry and anyone else.

The posts above by qwerty and myself spell things out plainly and simply.

If we go with the "correct" definition of the word "cloaking", all would be much simpler in the industry.

I know it's in the best interest of people who practice:

IP cloaking - detecting the IP of a search engine spider

so as to be able to then say:

Google cloaks!
Yahoo Cloaks!

I propose to make it MUCH easier:

Cloaking is "always" spam. Period.

I don't know who you talked to Marcia, but I've talked also and they agreed with my definition of cloaking. Much easier to understand.

Cloaking is "always" spam.

I think that what's important here is that ours is a pretty young industry, and its terminology is being created by our debates. In my view, the word "cloaking" has a negative connotation. It involves hiding and deception, so I don't see any logic in using it to describe a practice that isn't about hiding or deception, but is about such things as personalization.

If we choose to use a word with a bad connotation to describe a wide range of practices, only some of which fit that connotation, it's analagous to a proponent of euthanasia referring to it as a form of murder.... "good murder."

Why would we want to do that? So we'd have our own little argot and we could laugh at the people who misunderstood our terminology?

what's important here is that ours is a pretty young industry, and its terminology is being created by our debates.
Agreed that it's young industry, but it's already an established industry and a lot of the terminology has already been well established. What I see is that there are public debates generated as attempts to redefine what's already been established as definitions. Not to mention a lot of unnecessary conflict, quibbling over semantics.

People are calling things by their long-known established definitions, widely accepted by those who actually understand and use the technologies and have for years. Then others come along and try to redefine it for them and shove new terminology down people's throats by insisting that others accept their brand of explanations and redefinitions.

This is not, or should not be, a personal or an emotional issue; that would be bordering on the neurotic. This is purely about a technology and what that technology is called. When the people who have used that technology use certain terminology to refer to what they have used as a tool of their profession for years are told that they are wrong - and have been using the wrong words to describe what they do and need to change their vocabulary, that is what I consider the height of presumption.

I simply don't understand why people have such violent emotional reactions. They're just words - and people in any given industry who perform in any certain trade, industry or profession are the ones through whom the terminology and jargon develops.

Now the people who have been doing it for years, and also those referring to it for years (like search engines) are being told that they have been wrong all along, and are being corrected by those who now presume to know better. This is *not* a moral issue, this is an issue of semantics. And the ones trying to coerce changes into being accepted have, IMNSHO, a lot of downright chutzpah. In my opinion it's half self-righteous moralistic preaching and half opportunistic marketing spin.

I believe I was the first search engine manager to ever form and publish an official cloaking policy - back in 2000 when I was managing Scandinavias largest search engine. You can find the full statement here, and the discussion that followed:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum24/35.htm

I still stand by what I said back then and to my best knowladge most search engines today actually follow the guides I put out there. The focus is not cloaking - the focus is spam. Cloaked spam is just worse, but cloaking in itself is not a very important issue.

ihelpy:
I have concluded that you are not reachable and that it is taking too much energy to have a dialog with you on anything related to seo or search engines.

Nacho:
That's fine. But I believe that it is important for SEOs to actually understand how things work. It just brings the practice of optimizing a site to a higher level. For instance, learning how cloaking works can help you overcome obstacles like removing session IDs fro spiders while leaving them in place for regular 'human' visitors. Or, banning obnoxious bots. Or denying certain individuals from your forum according to his IP range. There are thousands of practical solutions for everyday problems once this stuff stops being scary 'black magic' and starts being practical knowledge.

Content Delivery ----> Cloaking with self justification.

Yet again, we have these ridiculous and rather ham handed attempts to basically say "it's evil if you do it, if I do it it's not".

Hilarious stuff...

Nick

I think Marcia makes a very valid point. I just happen to disagree with it.

If I make a statement and find that it's misunderstood because I was unclear, I make an effort to clarify it. I may even apologize for my poor choice of words, even if those words were technically correct. The purpose of language is, after all, to communicate, so if I find that I'm not communicating my meaning through my words, I need to use different words. Similarly, if I find that the terminology I use to describe my business confuses people, I make an effort to clarify my terminology, because since I mean what I say, I want people to know what I mean when I say it.

This is not a matter of political agendas to me. It's not about what's evil and what's benign, or who's evil and who's benign. I don't believe I'm muddying the waters, and I'm not accusing anyone of trying to do that. It's just about clarity.

If a client asks me to look at a competitor's site and I report back to them that the site is cloaking, my client is going to say something like "so they're cheating. Can we stop them?" If my response to that is "Well, they're cloaking, and I know cloaking sounds bad, but it isn't always. What they're doing is perfectly legitimate, and not in the least bit deceptive, but people in my business call it cloaking anyway, because we always have and always will" then it seems to me that I should have started the conversation by saying "they're checking the user's IP address in order to personalize the user experience a bit" and left out the word that would confuse my client.

It should also be noted that terminology changes and develops, because of new discoveries, or the recognition that words can be misinterpreted:
Mental deficiency used to be divided into the following sub-classifications, but these labels began to be abused by the public and are now largely obsolete: Borderline Deficiency (IQ 70-80), Moron (IQ 50-69), Imbecile (IQ 20-49 and Idiot (below 20). Mental deficiency is now generally called mental retardation. Source: http://www.webenet.com/iqclassifications.htm

I have a cousin who was born with brain damage. I would be terribly insulted to have a doctor refer to him as a "moron".

I have a bunch of sites that are cloaked. In the very essence of how Doug would define the word.

I also have a site that checks the UA and depending on what it finds, serves different formatting of the content. This again is teh very essence of what some call "content delivery".

To me, they are both cloaked sites. One risks the SE's wrath, one doesnt (unless an auto-filter is hit). One is black as black can be, one is so white it's painfull to look at. BUT, they are both cloaking.

Nick

I also have a site that checks the UA and depending on what it finds, serves different formatting of the content. This again is teh very essence of what some call "content delivery".
That's very good Nick. That's what Many websites do including google, yahoo, etc, etc, etc.

You are not deceiving a search engine, right? Of course not. It's just a form of content delivery.

Marcia: Believe me I understand what you are saying. WMW has been defining 'all' forms of content delivery as cloaking for years. Just because they have done that, why does that mean that "everyone" else has to have that same definition?

I know that many of us have not defined cloaking in that way, and have also done so for years. To us, the word "cloaking" means deception. At least that is what all dictionaries have said for years and years and years. Far longer than wmw.

All we are trying to say is that if we used the word how it was intended to be used, the industry would be much better off. Besides, lumping together all forms of content delivery by calling them 'cloaking' is surely not helpful to those we are trying to "reach" and "educate".

Bob's is a perfect example. "Many" potential clients ask the same question. I can't tell you how many times I am asked about "why does Google cloak" if it is spam and it's so bad? That's plain silly.

Your corner of the internet might have used this type of broad definition of cloaking for years, but it's not the definition of many of us. It should not be set in stone how our industry defines things. If something is confusing, fix it.

AND: Our industry is certainly "not" established. We have along way to go and are true babies in the scope of 'other' industries out there. We have that chance to make sure 'no one' is confused. Why not take the chance and run with it? What is so hard about using the "real" definition of cloaking to it's advantage?

Cloaking = Deception

Cloaking is always spam.

Examples of corporate cloaking, err I mean content delivery

MSN
You all remember when MSN was redirecting non MSIE users to a 'Use MSIE if you want to surf our network' BS page. At the time their pages were rendering fine in Mozilla and Opera, so there wasn't really a problem except that you had to fake your UA.

NYTimes
Lets googlebot in but redirects humans to a subscription page. Yet if a human uses a referer of google.com s/he can still get at the content.

WMW
Largely does the same thing as The NYTimes, plus does some link and meta enhancements.

A lot of paid sites let googebot spider their subscription only stuff, which IMO is much worse than old fashion cloaking done to drive traffic to the 'hidden web'.

Cloaking = Deception

Cloaking is always spam.

Allthough it's definately easier to communicate the above statement I just don't find it to be true.

The policy I was part of formaning back in 2000 for Kvasir/SOL has not officially been changed (even though I am not there anymore) and as I mentioned my personal observations show me that most of the other major engines practise removal of cloaked sites in just about the same way as outlined back then: They focus on spam - not so much specific techniques.

As far as I have seen engines only remove cloaked sites that spam - sites that mess up search results and search user experience. I have yet to see a cloaked site that dosn't harm users get penalised (but off course, I haven't seen everything). I have seen plente of cloaked sites that dosn't damage search results and that stay in the indexes forever - even though I know some of them has been reported for spam.

Cloaking is not black and white. In fact, in my personal experience, most of what we have to deal with in SEO is shades of gray rather than black and white. I understand the need to communicate this, and other complicated issues, in an easy to understand way to newbies and customers and the "cloaking is bad" statement may work for that - but we, as SEOs, should know our trade in much more details - understand the shades of gray, in my oppinion.

Thats why I do not personally like statements like "Cloaking is always spam". Thats like saying "The wheather in London is always bad" - I admit, it often is, but there are beautiful days too. Trust me, there are ...

>When I'm in Mexico (and it applies to other countries too) and I type in:
>www.google.com --------> and it serves me www.google.com.mx

I'm pretty sure this is done by router not by anything done on-page or on the server.

Google sniffs for locality by IP number to serve AdWords and Adsense. I call that IP delivery.

(Note: I don't need anyone from "that crowd" or any other crowd to tell me what to call it, I've got a mind and I can figure it for myself. Google is custom delivering ads according to IP numbers, both on their site and on AdSense partner sites.)

Bespoke IP delivery kind of has a nice ring to it. ;)

BTW, thank you Mikkel, for the sanity, the tact and the balance.

Its funny. SEO/M creates words that have tangible, useful meaning, and then keeps changing defrinitions until the word has no usefulness, and is nothing specific. Spam and cloaking are two great examples.

When people say "not all cloaking is bad", I wonder what the heck they define cloaking as. The definition of cloaking in non Search Engine terms http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cloaking&r=67 is as follows:
cloak P Pronunciation Key (klk)
n.
A loose outer garment, such as a cape.
Something that covers or conceals: a cloak of secrecy.

tr.v. cloaked, cloak·ing, cloaks
To cover or conceal with or as if with a cloak. See Synonyms at clothe. See Synonyms at disguise. See Synonyms at hide.
So, cloaking is the act of hiding something. It becomes fairly obvious how this definition of cloaking made the word an apt fit for the online process of detecting search engines, by whatever method you like, and delivering them content that is designed for them, and hidden from users.

But in classic smoke and mirrors style, SEO/M went "Hold on, but cloaking is just IP delivery. Or user agent delivery. or XYZ. So see, it isn't bad!!" This misses the point.

We don't need a way to describe what Google does in delivering users to different sites based upon country. We already have one (IP delivery). We don't need a word to describe the process of serving different browsers different code for appearance. We already have words for those processes.

Cloaking, in order to qualify as a word in its own right, must be something different, or a collection of things. Further, cloaking, as an SEO/M process that makes sense given the historical non-search engine route of the word, must involve some sort of "hiding", and the connotations associated with the original definition, of deception, must stand.

Given such an understanding, cloaking is not equal to IP delivery, cloaking is not equal to user-agent detetction and cloaking is not equal to spam. Cloaking may be a subset of spam, and may use ip delivery and / or user agent detection, but is not the same as these things, in teh same way that a BMW is a car, but not all cars are BMWs.

IMHO, there are no shades of grey. Cloaking was always intended to describe a practice that, at best, had negative connotations, and at worst was deceptive. If it isn't deceptive, it isn't cloaking, and there is probably another word / phrase that describes it.

To muddy the waters by redefining cloaking just renders another word in the SEM/O vocabulary useless.

If the idea is to diminish confusion rather than create more, I think we have to look at most of what's out there already in usage

Content Delivery (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=content+delivery&btnG=Google+Search)

As far as the most relevant individuals involved are concerned:

1. The cloakers will not change; they're not confused at all and they don't need anyone's help.
2. The customers looking for the service will continue to look for exactly that: cloaking
3. People who are curious and want to find more information about it will go looking here: Google search for cloaking (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=cloaking&btnG=Search)
4. The search engines know exactly what they're doing and what they're dealing with; they don't need anyone's help either.

I don't know exactly who the target of the campaign for semantic re-education is supposed to be, or what the purpose of all of it is, except possibly to make some kind of impact for marketing purposes. Conflict does tend to increase traffic and exposure. AFAIK they're "preaching to the choir", and the crowd they run with are apparently the ones who have been solidly convinced.

I'd like to see someone try to change thiis guy's (http://www.fantomaster.com) mind.

projectphp, I understand you are looking for simple explanations on things that is not so simple. Good luck with that :)

However, as pointed out this is not so simple. The engine I used to work for formed a policy (that as far as I am aware still stand) that is very different from the simple statements some people make about cloaking. In fact, at that search engine cloaking is not at all the issue; spam is - and those two things is not the same in the eyes of this search engine. So for anyone to claim that all search engines think cloaking is all bad is simply not true. Saying it over and over again dosn't change that.

The reason cloaking, IP-delivery, content targeting or whatever you want to call it is getting mixed up is because the words are not important, the technology invlolved is not important - only the pupose of what you do and the results it leads to is. If you mess up the search engines product by spamming their index and damage search user experience they will react and that has nothing to do with what techniques you implement to do so.

Search engines will kick you even if you only use so called "White hat Techniques" if that it leads to is a messed up search result. I remember a website we kicked from the engine I worked for. The webmaster called me up and said he was sorry he made some server mistake that messed it up for us but I had to tell him: Sorry, you messed up our product that I am hired to protect so you are out! I do not have time for your mistakes in my index. It's really that simple.

So for anyone to claim that all search engines think cloaking is all bad is simply not true. Saying it over and over again dosn't change that.


This is where I think alot of the problems lay (as it appears do you Mikkel). Some points of view are so extreme that they need constant justification to survive.

However, repeatedly stating ones case does not make a compelling argument.

It's all about intent. Sure the engines can try to sort out cloakers by automated filter but it doesnt work very well, and they may well end up harming good sites, that add quality to their index. Where cloakers really suffer, (cloakers that do indeed foul up the index) is the dreaded hand edit.

I think you make a good point Mikkel, from an interesting perspective. Im prepared to run with that, it makes sense to me, thanks ;-)

Nick

Thanks Nick. Maybe I have pointed this out well enough: I do most often recomend companies to stay far away from anything close to cloaking. Most often they don't have to and in other cases it's just too risky - especially if you already invested millions in your brand and domain name. But, I am just not "religious" about it

I admit it: I am one big Gray Hat :D

projectphp, I understand you are looking for simple explanations on things that is not so simple.
I think you got me wrong. I don't want simple explanations, I want words to mean something. There have been two threads in two days in which words have been defined out of any and all usefulness.

If words don't mean anything, or worse still, if we can't agree what they mean, they are useless. We should therfore either stop using those words, or give them no power. You call me a spammer, that has about as much power as calling me a widget salesmen.

Cloaking is not complicated and grey. It is very simply a word coined to describe a practice that is designed, at best, to be a trick, and at worst to be outright deceptive. To redefine the word to justify a position is unhelpful.

The engine I used to work for formed a policy...
To be totally 100% blunt, so what?

What an SE does, so long as the Search engine obeys the numerous laws that are relevant, doesn't concern me. Search Engines are not, and should not, be the highest power that regulate behaviour. As the largest referrers of traffic, they have a de facto power, and the rules they set have real teeth.That is not, and should not, be the only issue.

Whether an SE feels they have been deceived, and what specific action they take, only concerns me as far as such actions are legally defensible, i.e. they can't misrepresent a competitors listings.

Search engines shouldn't be the only ones that have a say in whether a listing is deceptive, but that is the situation we find people arguing. It is bizarre how virtually everyone has the same view on this: Search Engines are the only ones that set the rules. From this view, there are two seperate camps: those that accept and work within these guidelines, the suppossed erstwhile whitehats. If you don't, your black hat. Basically, both sides have surrendered to SEs all control in this area, and then either say who cares or lets try to obey.

But there is a third possible viewpoint, in which SE are themselves just a player in a game regulated by higher purposes and powers, like consumer protection, fair labelling and the FTC.

If we are to attempt to work towards such lofty goals as consumer protection, we need a vocabulary to help us ascertain whether something fits these goals or not. We need to know what is right and wrong. If spam and cloaking no longer hold any usefulness or meaning, lets just drop them altogether.

Heck, it couldn't cause anymore confusion.

Maybe I have pointed this out well enough: I do most often recomend companies to stay far away from anything close to cloaking.
You are missing the point.

If "companies" were educated as to what cloaking actually was, no need for those companies to "stay away" from all the technologies that "help" them, and do so with NO risk at all.

When a website is made in all flash, the best way to make sure that site caters to ALL types of "disabilities" is to have a separate "html" website. When a request is made of the site's server by some kind of agent, the server detects whether or not flash is installed. If flash is not installed, the agent is sent to the "html" site. If flash is installed, the agent is sent to the flash website. As long as the html site accurately depicts ALL content and product/service of the flash site, NO problems at all.

While the server is detecting what the agent might have installed, it's very obvious a search engine spider is "not" going to have flash installed, right? So that spider will also be sent to the html website.

What's the outcome?

The outcome is that the website will be indexed by the engines, and any agents who request a page from the server will be delivered to the appropriate website.

Not cloaking. NOT deception at all.

Let's start calling and defining the word "cloaking" as it was meant to be used many, many, years ago. Think "cape". Think hidden. Think deception.

ANY other use of the word cloaking is actually what I call "deceptive". It's always been the attempt of those who actually "DO" practice "cloaking" to confuse and obscure and blur the issue of ALL forms of content delivery. Cloaking is only one form of content delivery, and that form is "always" spam.

I agree with PHP.

If we insist on continuing to use words that fail to express their meaning to others because 1) we always have and 2) we know what they mean, it indicates that we either don't care whether others understand us, or worse, we don't want them to understand us. And I simply don't understand why we wouldn't want others to understand us.

If I use the word "cloaking" to describe a practice, I know that people will take that to mean something deceptive, so I'm not going to use that word to describe something benign and useful, because doing so would require me to qualify the use of the word (cloaking, yes, but not the bad kind of cloaking). If I throw the word out there without the qualification, I have to know that at least some people will misinterpret what I'm saying.

Here's a thought. I'm going to start a campaign to use the word "assault" to describe all human contact, physical and verbal. Sure, some assault will involve the violent attack of another person, but not all. Why should the word be limited to just its bad definition?

"I assaulted John today."

"What? Why would you do that? Is he alright?"

"He's fine. What are you talking about?"

"You said you assaulted him."

"Yeah, I saw him at the coffee shop. We said hello."

I fail to see how this have much with words to do. It's about substance. I do agree that is good we all understand the meaning of words but I do not think it's wise to put pre-defined judgements on those words. There are many words that change meaning over time - especially in our business. One day "mass emailing" is Q"good" - the next day people associate it with something bad. My english is unfortunately too limited to take a more academic discussion about linguistics, but I am ready to continue that part in Danish - any time :)

The point is, that I do think we can agree on the basic meaning of what cloaking is. What I don't like is the judment put on that word as some sort of ever lasting truth. Just because some people think cloaking is always spam dosn't make that the truth - it's just an oppinon, just like I have mine and search engines have their own. You may want to draw up your set definition and I am fine with that it just dosn't change the fact that I am hired to produce targeted visitors and business.

I think search engines is the key to this because my job is to do marketing that eventually produce money. No matter if I like it or not the search engines have the final saying on weather they can and will crawl my sites or even have them listed in P4P. To me this is not so much about a theoretical discussion on weather or not some word have one or the other meaning - but how search engines in fact react to it and interpret it. In order to produce the marketing I am hired to I have to know the rules search engines enforce rather than what other people think.

Okay, but I don't understand your last post.

Do you think it's a good thing if the general public understands exactly what we talking about when we use the word "cloaking"?

Just because some people think cloaking is always spam dosn't make that the truth - it's just an oppinon, just like I have mine and search engines have their own.


I was about to post a very similar thing ;) - Because some choose to claim the moral high ground on certain SEO type issues, it does NOT mean they are right.

How can one person, or a small group of people claim so categorically that "all cloaking is spam" as if they're some kind of authority on the subject?

There *is* no authority on the subject. Not IHY, not Perkins, not Google and most assuredly not me ;)

I think Doug would classify me as being firmly in the 'black hat' camp right Doug? - Well, that may or may not be the case, however, I do hang out with a LOT of this group. And I can tell you point blank: No One Wants to Be Lumped Together with You Seriously, not for any other reason than none of us care that much about it....

It's not about marketing spin, it's just a simple case of how we use language to define what we do.

To me, cloaking is cloaking. That includes "good cloakng" whatever that may be! LoL! ~ It is just my opinion though, and apart from a fun debate, it matters not a whit to me what anyone else chooses to call it. So there! hehe

Nick

I don't think a debate like this will attract a lot of "general public" :) As I see it, this is a rather geeky discussion among SEO professionals about techniques used in our field of trade.

There are a lot of this sort of geeky stuff that I agree is not neccesarily very useful for the general public. Not because I do not think they should know about it but because it's way more detailed than most of them will have time to learn and understand.

However, I do not need set and pre-defined judgements on the words I use to communicate with clients. My consulting is always based on the actual situration the client is in and to do that, and adapt to whatever requerements they have, I have personally found it much more productive to stay gray rather than trying to define everything as being black or white. But then again, thats just what I have learned works the best for me and the clients I service. I am not trying to enforce my way of doing things on others :)

I don't think a debate like this will attract a lot of "general public" As I see it, this is a rather geeky discussion among SEO professionals about techniques used in our field of trade.
Again, I don't understand your post.

The whole point is that it certainly concerns the general public. How many "guests" read in these forums daily and will never become members? Don't think for one second that many new webmasters and owners are not reading these threads. It should be a high priority to make sure those people don't leave totally confused about what the heck cloaking is.

Now some of you seem to be dismissing the issue. Some of us are attempting to clearly define the issue so that the "general public" can have a firm understanding of "all" the forms of content delivery.

Now some of you seem to be dismissing the issue. Some of us are attempting to clearly define the issue so that the "general public" can have a firm understanding of "all" the forms of content delivery.


And that may indeed be your intention. Unfortunately the impression I get from what you've written is that you seek to define somthing that strengthens your marketing spin. If your intention is genuine, write an article, get it out there on the newbie boards, etc etc, you never know, you might even manage it ;)

Nick

And that may indeed be your intention. Unfortunately the impression I get from what you've written is that you seek to define somthing that strengthens your marketing spin.
Again, an attempt to skirt the real issue with "your" marketing spin, not mine.

There are quite a few in this thread and quite a few of others out there who feel exactly the same way about this cloaking issue. You point at me and claim "marketing spin". That's false. I only wish to make sure the general public is "not" confused. I'm tired of hearing:

Google Cloaks!

If that is not confusing to the general public, I have not a clue what is.

To go back to the original question in this thread:

I'm trying to figure out a way to get some keyword URL's in there w/o trashing my directory structure

We've since devolved into a debate on what is or isn't cloaking. I think enough points have been made on that issue, so I'm bringing the thread to a close.

I'll also drop a link to an article I did last year on the subject, Ending The Debate Over Cloaking (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2165231). It didn't, as you might guess, end the debate on cloaking :). But it does recap many of the same points expressed on many sides in this thread.

As to the original question, I vote with Nick W on the best advice:

My advice would be to drop the idea entirely, file names are a very small part of it, just concentrate on the anchor text

That's my own opinion, of course. If you want some others on the issue of keywords in file names, check out these threads: Hyphenated URLs (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=87) and SEO and file names (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=257).