Anti Code Napping - Tutorial #1: How to protect your meta tags efficiently from snooping competitors with only two lines of code

Anti-Code Napping

How to protect your meta tags efficiently from snooping competitors with only two lines of code

As you can see, we have inserted quite a stack of different keywords and meta tags on these pages — much more, in fact, than you would normally do in practice. This was simply for illustration's sake: what it proves is that you can hide as much text as you like with this technique.

But surely this text can't be read by the search engines either?

As so often, the answer here is: it depends. While an increasing number of search engines (most notably Inktomi, DirectHit and AOL Netfind) have taken to implementing web browser UserAgents since this tutorial was first written, the vast majority of search engine spiders have not. The latter (including, for example, Google, AltaVista, FAST and Northern Light) will not, therefore, pose any problems.

As for those which do, you might want to submit your pages without this code protection to them first and add it later on, after your pages have been indexed. You may also opt to ignore them altogether as they generally do not give meta tags the same weight as they used to in the past.

BTW: the page you are currently reading uses identical meta tags, header and stealt code as the preceding one.

And now let's divulge the true contents of this page's header and its meta tags:

<head> <title>Anti Code Napping - Tutorial #1: How to protect your meta tags efficiently from snooping competitors with only two lines of code - 2008-08-28</title> <meta name="testtext" content="While you can read this text easily, the meta tags immediately between this entry (up until the header end tag /HEAD i.e. the style sheet link directly above it) will remain invisible! They are, however, absolutely visible for most search engine spiders and will hence be indexed in full. Thus you can easily prevent competitors from code napping your meta tags entries - and, hence, your search engine top ranking which is so crucial to your e-commerce's economic survival." /> <!--#if expr="\"$HTTP_USER_AGENT\" != /Mozilla\|MSIE\|Opera\|Lynx\|WebTV\|NCSA Mosaic/" --> <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" /> <meta name="revisit-after" content="10 days" /> <meta name="generator" content="VRTN webDESIGN" /> <meta name="resource-type" content="document" /> <meta name="DC.Publisher" content="Verlag Ralph Tegtmeier Nachf." /> <meta name="DC.Identifier" content="http://fantomaster.com" /> <meta name="DC.Language" content="en" /> <meta name="DC.Rights" content="http://fantomaster.com" /> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" /> <meta http-equiv="description" content="Anti Code Napping - Tutorial #1: How to protect your meta tags efficiently from snooping competitors with only two lines of code" /> <meta name="description" content="Anti Code Napping - Tutorial #1: How to protect your meta tags efficiently from snooping competitors with only two lines of code" /> <meta http-equiv="keywords" lang="en" content="code napping,protect,filter,cloak,cloaking,stealth,search engine,code protection,meta tags,fantomas" /> <meta name="keywords" content="code napping,protect,filter,cloak,cloaking,stealth,search engine,code protection,meta tags,fantomas" /> <!--#endif --> <!-- BEGIN Head --> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://fantomaster.com/js/shared/main.js"></script> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://fantomaster.com/images/favicon.ico" /> <style type="text/css" media="screen"> @import url("http://fantomaster.com/css/screen.css"); @import url("/site.css");</style> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="http://fantomaster.com/css/print.css" /> <!-- END Head --> </head>

<head>
<title>Anti Code Napping - Tutorial #1: How to protect your meta tags efficiently from snooping competitors with only two lines of code - 2008-08-28</title>
<meta name="testtext" content="While you can read this text easily, the meta tags immediately between this entry (up until the header end tag /HEAD i.e. the style sheet link directly above it) will remain invisible! They are, however, absolutely visible for most search engine spiders and will hence be indexed in full.
Thus you can easily prevent competitors from code napping your meta tags entries - and, hence, your search engine top ranking which is so crucial to your e-commerce's economic survival." />

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://fantomaster.com/js/shared/main.js"></script>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://fantomaster.com/images/favicon.ico" />
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
@import url("http://fantomaster.com/css/screen.css");
@import url("/site.css");</style>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="http://fantomaster.com/css/print.css" />

</head>

“So how does it work?”

In a nutshell: every web browser transmits a sort of type identification, technically termed “User Agent”. For example, Netscape's Communicator uses “Mozilla”, while the Microsoft Internet Explorer employs “MSIE” to identify itself, etc.

This user agent is read by the web server and will (usually) be written to the server's log files. Now, have a look at the two code lines marked bold in the box below. (You will also find them in the text box above.)

User Agents

This short italicized text enclosed between the two bold stealth code lines would remain invisible to the following browser types and their clones:
- Netscape/Mozilla
- Internet Explorer
- Opera
- Lynx
- WebTV
- NCSA Mosaic/Spry/Spyglass

All you have to do is copy these two bold lines and enclose the code you wish to protect (e.g. the meta tags in the header section of your document) between them.

The .htaccess File

For this technique to work, you will need to upload a file named “.htaccess” (please note the period/dot at the beginning of the file name!) to your server directory. This can be done via telnet or ftp.

The file should have the following content:

Options Includes +ExecCGI
AddType text/x-server-parsed-html .html

Please note Many web servers will not require the specfication “Includes”, meaning you can omit it altogether. However, since it won't do any harm to keep it in your file, we suggest you do not change the above entry. Thus, should you switch your server some day, you will not have to readjust your .htaccess file.

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Further Points

Style Sheets

Should you wish to make use of external .CSS style sheets, take care to position the pertinent line after the second stealth code line in your page header. (I.e. outside of the stealth code!) Otherwise, your browser will not be able to read your style sheet and your formatting and display paramaters won't be executed.

Java & JavaScript

Should you wish to make use of Java-Applets and/or JavaScript which are to be uploaded together with your weg page, they should be treated similarly to style sheets (see above).

No absolute Security

Please remain aware that while the technique presented here offers an excellent protection against code napping, such protection can never be absolute! Should your competitors make use of a browser type not referenced in your exclusion code — which, while fairly unlikely, is nevertheless possible — or should they employ so called “anti cloaking software” which will spoof some other user agent when accessing your system (e.g. a search engine spider), they may yet get hold of your meta tag codes in spite of all your efforts. It is, therefore, mandatory that you review your server log files regularly to detect unusual or unfamiliar user agents to insert in your exclusion code.

Obviously, this procedure being more or less reactive and passive, you can only act after the damage is done. If you wish to protect your web pages in a more efficient manner, you will have to resort to real, professional phantom page technology, which many experts consider to be the Royal Road to code protection and optimized search engine positioning.

3D Context Delivery

You may wish to check out our fantomas 3D Context Delivery™ service on this.

phantomLine™ — the ultimate stealth

Anti-Code Napping

The .htaccess File