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The Google Trap: A Warning
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by
Dirk Brockhausen
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If you happen to use Google's proprietary meta tag:

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOSNIPPET">

the search results pages will only display your web
page's title and the URL.

No other page content will be displayed.

However, this does not, as has been claimed recently
in various articles and statements (and based on Google's
own misleading statements on site!), deactivate Google's
standard caching function - meaning that if you omit to
exclude this function specifically, any cloaked page's
content you may have submitted would be displayed for
every one to see, thus constituting a prime decloaking
hazard. (Note that we have always advised against cloaking
for Google!)

The only way to prevent Google from caching your page
content and offering it to everyone for display is to
use Google's proprietary meta tag:

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

More info on the NOSNIPPET tag can be found on Google's
site at: 

< http://www.google.com/remove.html#remove_snippets >

Here, it specifically says:

"A snippet is a text excerpt from the returned result page
that has all query terms bolded. The excerpt allows users to
see the context in which search terms appear on a web page,
before clicking on the result. Users are more likely to click
on a search result if it has a corresponding snippet.

If you wish to prevent Google from displaying snippets for
your pages, use the following tag:

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOSNIPPET">"

However, note the following misleading statement on this
page:

"Note: removing snippets also removes cached pages."


Google, sad to say, cannot be believed in this point -
yet another case of a search engine publishing faulty
if not downright destructive advice on search engine
optimization!

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[Main text: 272 words/1807 characters]
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This text may freely be republished or distributed
provided the following resource box is included intact
either at the beginning or the end of the article and
a complimentary copy or notice (link) is sent to the
author at the address specified below:

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Dirk Brockhausen is the co-founder and principal of
fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), a company specializing 
in webmasters software development, industrial-strength 
cloaking and search engine positioning services. 
He holds a doctorate in physics and has worked as a 
certified SAP consultant and software developer since 
1994. He is also Technical Editor of fantomNews, a free 
newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, 
available at:
< http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html >
You can contact him at
mailto:fntecheditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2001 by fantomaster.com
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