All major search engines compete to make their results as relevant, current, and useful as possible. For a search engine to be seen as effective—and to keep attracting users—it depends on its reputation for returning the right information for any given search term.
That assumption makes sense. Imagine you were looking for tips on how to clean your windows and decided to try a search engine you weren’t familiar with. If you clicked a result and ended up on an adult porn site, you wouldn’t be pleased. In fact, you’d probably write off that search engine as useless and avoid using it again.
That’s why search engines take an issue known as “cloaking” so seriously. If their success depends on accurate, informative results, they have a responsibility—to their own business standards and to their users—to take a firm stance against cloaking. And they do. Use it, and your website may be removed from search results and most likely blacklisted.
So what is cloaking? Cloaking is the practice of using programming to show human visitors one version of your website while showing search engine bots a very different one. If done effectively, cloaking could disguise an adult site as something as harmless as a window-cleaning resource—and help it gain a strong SEO ranking. Unfortunately, it would also damage the quality of the search engine’s results, and search engines won’t allow that. When it comes to cloaking, avoid it.
