Harmful Effects of Search Engine Cloaking

Cloaking, the technology
Cloaking is a practice that involves a server-side script written for a client website with the purpose of showing a site to the public that is different from the website published as a search engine result.

The server-side script detects the IP address of any incoming search engine, triggering the “switch.” The supposedly indexed website is hidden beneath the server-side script.

When the search engine user clicks on a cloaked site, he is automatically redirected to a client site that may or may not be what is indexed—depending on where the script redirects the user.

Cloaking is generally frowned upon by the online marketing industry, including the Big 3 search engines. Cloaking is always illegitimate when it misleads users. The only legitimate use of cloaking is when users are redirected to the same content website sans the graphics. Search engine spiders do not discriminate against images or text within images. They crawl through text and pull up pages that match the inquiry.

More often than not, cloaking ushers in multiple problems that can negatively affect your website’s search engine rankings and even customers’ perception of your company. Below are 3 major blows you can suffer from cloaking.

1. Your website could be banned and blacklisted
The biggest, most relevant search engines can detect whether or not your website is cloaked. As of this moment, these search engines are perfecting their technology to be able to make faster detections.

Although they cannot determine if a cloaking provider services your site, they can tell if you have submitted a site with a hidden script for indexing.

The goal of the best search engines is to be able to give the users results closest to the information they seek.

Cloaking goes against their mission, and so you will be penalised accordingly.

Often, the penalty is being banned and blacklisted.

2. Cloaking companies work for themselves, not for the ranking of your website
Usually, cloaking companies charge an agreed fee per successful redirection—a business model that closely resembles pay-per-click advertising.

All cloaking providers work on a separate system independent of their clients’ websites. Whatever these cloaking providers do, nothing will help your website rank, no matter how many successful redirections take place.

When your site attracts traffic through back linking or clicks made through search engine rankings that your site attained on its own, cloaking providers do not get any incentives (no redirection, no pay). Therefore, there is no reason for these cloaking companies to work on META tags or give any legitimate SEO advice.

3. Cloaking threatens your company’s credibility
People get annoyed when they find out that they’re being deceived. A lot of users could click on your page thinking it will give them what they need.

Then they get redirected to something else entirely. This will cast your company in a bad light, and annoyed people will talk. You cannot risk the public thinking that you are a scheming, conning company.

It takes a lot to build and maintain credibility and one bad decision to bring you back to zero. Do not risk your company. If you do the basics well, your site will naturally rank and paying customers will find you.