• About
    • History of Dallas SEO
    • SEO Expert Witness Service
  • Contact
  • Topics
    • Bing
    • Blogging
    • Branding
    • Domain Names
    • Google
    • Internet Marketing
    • Link Building
    • Local Search
    • Marketing
    • Public Relations
    • Reputation Management
    • Search Engine Marketing
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Search Engines
    • Social Media
    • Tech
  • Advertise
  • Email Newsletter

Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Search, Marketing, Tech, and Domains.

traffic analysis tools

Home » Google » Is It OK to Use Website Cloaking?

Is It OK to Use Website Cloaking?

Posted By Bill Hartzer on August 27, 2018at 3:30 pm

Note: Don’t always believe everything is posted on Twitter, or any other social media website. In this case, DejanSEO and John Mueller from Google were joking about rogue bots and cloaking. Parts of this post have been edited.

There was a recent Tweet from DejanSEO to John Mueller from Google about technical SEO. Apparently DejanSEO has rogue crawlers that disobey his robots.txt file. They crawl the website even though the robots.txt file says that they can’t crawl the website. Dan Petrovic asked John how to deal with rogue crawlers.

website cloaking

Technical SEO question. Rogue crawler disobeys my robots. @JohnMu what can I do to stop it?

John Mueller responded with:

Maybe redirect or serve it content from another website?

Keep in mind that John Mueller and DejanSEO were joking in this Twitter thread. What John suggested, like it or not, is what I would define as website cloaking. Cloaking is when you serve up content to one visitor but serve up different content to another visitor to your website. From an SEO perspective, website cloaking is done to deceive, to serve up certain content to the search engines and other content to a website’s visitors. There are generally two different ways to cloaking for SEO purposes:

  1. Identify the user based on their user-agent and serve them up certain content.
  2. Identify the user based on their IP address and serve them up certain content.

If your website serves up content to one visitor and serves up different content (or redirects them to another website or web page) to the search engines on purpose, then you’re cloaking. That violates the search engines’ guidelines. This is different than customizing the content. Customizing the content on a page is considered to be OK when you’re “customizing” the content (displaying certain content on the page) that others may or may not see based on who the visitor is. Generally that requires the visitor to have previously visited your website and accept cookies.

But if you serve up or redirect visitors based on their user-agent or based on their IP address in an attempt to deceive or hide optimized content, that could be considered website cloaking. As I said, that could be against search engine guidelines. Here’s Google’s guidelines on Cloaking, which is strictly against Google’s acceptable guidelines.

So while John Mueller was joking with DejanSEO, and suggested that he redirect (cloak) certain visitors (in this case a crawler), I actually don’t recommend that at all. Frankly, I would identify the crawler and just block them from visiting the website. If you don’t have the technical expertise to do that, then services such as CloudFlare can help stop rogue bots and crawlers from crawling your website too quickly or by crawling too many pages.

Join the discussion over on Twitter.

Update: DejanSEO told me, in a Tweet, that John Mueller “wasn’t talking about visitors, website or traffic. He meant I literally cover my walking robot from the video with a cloak to stop it from attacking my green robot.”

Filed Under: Google

traffic analysis tools

Listen to "Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer" on Spreaker.

About Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer is CEO of Hartzer Consulting, LLC, an SEO Consulting firm that includes services such as search engine optimization, technical SEO audits, domain name consulting, and online reputation management.

Recent Posts

  • Andrew Muller on Testing Google Ads Using Facebook Ads January 15, 2021
  • Mike Rhodes from Web Savvy On Google Ads January 8, 2021
  • How to Opt Out of Google Analytics December 16, 2020
  • Majestic Just Changed SEO and Linking Forever December 15, 2020
  • Yext Consumer Search Trend Predictions for 2020 December 8, 2020
  • SearchBox Launches SearchAI SmartSuggest, SearchAI Answers and SearchAI Personalization December 7, 2020
  • Google Poly is Shutting Down December 2, 2020
  • Domain Name Brokers Put FFF.com and HHH.com Domains Up for Sale December 1, 2020
  • Google Webmaster Tools Moves Twitter Account November 11, 2020
  • Email Deliverability, Setting Up DMARC, DKIM, and SPF on Your Domain October 29, 2020
  • The Bing Search Engine is Now Microsoft Bing October 6, 2020
  • Beck Power on Building Authority on Social Media and Repurposing Content October 2, 2020
  • Naira Perez on Paid Media, and an Intro to Social Paid Media, and Audiences September 17, 2020
  • Fake Birth Date Used on Google and Apple Accounts Is on Credit Report August 17, 2020
  • What is Bill Hartzer Disease? July 20, 2020
  • Web Host Agents Sending Fake Invoices for Website Hosting July 17, 2020
  • Duane Forrester On Search Intent and Internal Site Search July 9, 2020
  • Google Loses Blogspot.In Domain Name July 8, 2020
  • Peter Leshaw on In-House Digital Marketing and Dashboards for Reporting July 2, 2020
  • Mark Traphagen on Schema, Schema Tools, and On Page SEO Tools June 29, 2020

DFWSEM logo

Bill Hartzer is a Brand Ambassador for:



Industry Friends

WTFSEO
SEO By the Sea
Jeff Lenney
Jeff Gabriel
Phil Drinkwater
Dixon Jones

Connect With Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Twitter
Bill Hartzer on Instagram
Hartzer Consulting on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on YouTube

Categories

  • Advertising (19)
  • Bing Search Engine (6)
  • Blogging (42)
  • Branding (12)
  • Domain Names (197)
  • Google (228)
  • Internet Marketing (24)
  • Internet Usage (84)
  • Link Building (52)
  • Local Search (38)
  • Marketing (176)
  • Marketing Foo (30)
  • Pay Per Click (1)
  • Podcast (8)
  • Public Relations (8)
  • Reputation Management (9)
  • Search Engine Marketing (44)
  • Search Engine Marketing Events (47)
  • Search Engine Marketing Firms (19)
  • Search Engine Marketing Jobs (33)
  • Search Engine Optimization (156)
  • Search Engines (202)
  • Social Media (187)
  • Tech (7)
  • Web Analytics (16)




Note: All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only, and are mentioned only to help my readers. All other trademarks cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.




Hartzer Consulting



Website, Content, and Marketing by Hartzer Consulting, LLC.

Copyright © 2021 by Bill Hartzer and Hartzer Consulting, LLC.

Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
Go to mobile version