What is Cloaking?

[jaimehopkin]

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable.

The purpose of cloaking is sometimes to deceive search engines. so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed (black hat SEO).

[DavisJoseph]

Cloaking is a search engine optimization Black hat method that some webmasters use to show the content of their sites to the search engine spider so they could rank higher for their keywords, and they show something else to the visitors.

[allenhill]

Cloaking generally means to present different version of web page contents from of search engines to search robots and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address. It's a deceptive method used to cheat search engines in order to rank well for desired keywords.

[mikey45]

Clocking generally means to present different version of web page contents for search engines and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address. It's a deceptive method used to cheat search engines in order to rank well for desired keywords.

[petersmith5544]

Cloaking is commonly referred to as a black hat, or unethical, SEO practice. Cloaking consists of deceiving search engine crawlers by directing them to web pages that are not actually visible on the domain that the crawlers are trying to analyze.

[JackLord]

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the user's browser. ...

[stephan07]

Clocking is a measurement of content and presented content on different pages.

[AndrewBert]

Cloaking is black hat technique. It is a technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's Browsers.

[heliumc]

Re:

As of me Cloaking is basically means to present different version of web page contents from of search engines to search robots and human visitors based on their browser's user agent or IP address. It is a deceptive technique used to cheat search engines in order to rank well for desired keywords.

[jackmusic]

Cloaking having to separate pages, one optimized for the search engine and second one optimized for the viewer.

[william17]

Cloaking is an SEO technique in which the browser content is different from the content displayed before the search engines. It is a Blackhat SEO technique that is considered to be against the guidelines to be maintained while performing SEO.

[rahulraj]

Cloaking is a SEO technique in which the content shown to the search engine spider is different from user.

[stuartspindlow]

Cloaking is a black hat technique of SEO. When a website have two different instance for search engines and visitors then it is called cloaking.

[jackstevens]

Cloaking is a technique which is used in Black Hat SEO that enables to create two distinct pages where the page content being presented to search engine spider is different from that which is being presented to the user’s browser. These techniques do not come under the guidelines of search engines.

[Paarsa12412]

Thanx all members for sharing good information about cloaking.