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Cloaking For Google
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by
Ralph Tegtmeier
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Don't cloak for Google - they don't like it! :-)
However, if you must cloak for Google whatever the
reason, take great care: 

a) Do not to use their proprietary NOARCHIVE tag as
there's been some indication recently that this may
either raise a red flag or lead to proactive rank
demotion. Even if this assumption should prove to be
faulty, using the tag may well work as a dead giveaway
in case they do opt for a major ip delivery witchhunt some
day, as well they may, at least when considering their
public stance against the "bad boys of cloaking" ...

b) Of course, you'd normally want to use the NOARCHIVE
tag to prevent your cloaked page to be displayed for
every man and his dog to see via Google's cache
function. So in lieu of that tag you should implement a
cache buster (JavaScript) on every phantom page
redirecting human viewers to the target URL.
Note that this won't provide you with 100% security -
if someone turns off their JS functionality in their
browser, they will still be able to see your cloaked
page in all its glory! However, it's the next best
option to being stigmatized by Google for using their
own tag.

c) Finally, make dead sure you're using the very best
and most comprehensive database of search engine
spiders available - miss one spider, and five will give
you twenty that you're out. 
Not so much because they will ban you for cloaking
(which happens very rarely in actual practice, much
hyped as it may be) but because the spider will report
the redirection and more often than not will index the
unoptimized target URL instead, meaning that either
your cloaked site (shadow domain) or your phantom page
won't get indexed at all, which of course beats the
whole point of cloaking.

At the risk of stating the obvious, we recommend our
own fantomas spiderSpy(TM) botBase, available here:
< http://fantomaster.com/fasvsspy01.html >

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This text may be freely republished or distributed
provided all product links and the following resource
box are included intact (box may be included below or
above article) and a complimentary copy or notice (link)
is sent to the author at the address specified below:

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Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of
fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >,
a company specializing in webmasters software development,
industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning 
services.
He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is
editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter
focusing on search engine optimization, available at:
< http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html >
You can contact him at
mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
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(c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com
    All rights reserved.
Downloaded at: < http://fantomaster.com/ >
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