The exercise of “cloaking” consists of writing a server-side script that identifies the IP address of the incoming search engine and serves it a Web page that is dissimilar from the one displayed to the common public. The indexed Web page is veiled behind a stealth script, and when the user clicks on the listing in the search engine, he or she is automatically redirected to a client’s site.

People or companies that employ cloaking scripts will frequently rail against the evils of page-jackers and protest against others pinching their HTML codes to reach a improved ranking. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and it rarely happens in any case. There are lot’s of off-the-page ranking factors in most search engines today that this is barely a realistic justification.

There are very few, legitimate uses of cloaking technology…on the other hand they are not at all employed by the kind of SEP companies who charge clients by the click-through. The only time a cloaking script can be legitimately employed is if the user gets the very same content presented to the search engines.

The only time that a cloaking script can legitimately be employed to show a user a changed Web page than the one indexed is if both the user and the search engine view the exact content but not the same graphical content. Search engines don’t make any relevancy judgment about a Web page based on its visual appeal. Their spiders have no way of interpreting the contents of a graphic or any text contained in a graphic. They basically don’t optically identify text.

Here are details why cloaking would not benefit you:

1. If a search engine identifies that you have hired the services of a cloaking provider, you are on the risk of having your site banned or blacklisted. Keep in mind, a search engine has no way of knowing what you have employed a vendor. All they understand is you submitted a “hidden” page for indexing and then redirected the search engine’s end user. So what if you used a provider to help you? Search engines are not interested in exploring each violation case by case to resolve which company hired which supplier. They are only concerned in cleaning their index of hidden pages and penalizing companies that employ this method. If you take advantage of cloaking, you are a legitimate target.

2. All cloaking companies work outside of their clients’ Web sites. No one of them will help you write one META tag or arrange one directory submission. All together, a right ranking listed in a directory or attained by your site itself will navigate visitors to the genuine client site…not to the cloaker’s intermediate page where supplementary traffic can be connected, referred, and at last billed to you. there is no inceptive for the cloaking provider to help you attain rankings in these directories or for your actual Web pages.

In the end, SEP improved throughout the practice of cloaking is, quite possibly, fraud. If you have a realistic company, don’t play with the fire of cloaking. If you wish to manipulate how high your Web pages rank.