What is cloaking and why will Google make your site disappear from the internet if you use it?
Considering that things never stop evolving, if we talk about the internet and placing web pages in a way that everyone can eventually access them, we are always looking for ways to do that efficiently.
In the midst of all this, there is a highly controversial practice known as cloaking, which has sparked significant discussions in the digital marketing and cybersecurity community.
- What is cloaking?
Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique that consists of displaying different content to search engines and human users. Essentially, it’s about “tricking” search engines by presenting a version of your website that’s optimized for positioning, while real visitors see a different version.
Simply put, it's like having two versions of your web page: one for search engines and one for people. Two different sides of your website.
Imagine you have an online toy store. With cloaking, when Google visits your page, you show them a copy filled with words like “cheap toys,” “best toys for kids,” and lots of toy descriptions. But when a real customer visits the page, they see the regular store with pretty pictures of toys and deals.
Those who are very professional in this do it to try to appear in the first results of Google, but without changing what real customers see. It's like you're telling Google what you want to hear, but showing your customers something more attractive.
While it may seem like a good idea to put it up on Google first, it’s actually risky. Google doesn’t allow it and can penalize websites that do, including removing them from search results altogether.
-This is how cloaking appeared and evolved over the years.
Cloaking is not a new technique. Its origins date back to the early days of search engines, when algorithms were much simpler and easier to deal with. Back then, it was enough to fill a page with keywords to get a good position in a search engine.
As search engines became more sophisticated, so did cloaking techniques. Webmasters began using server-side scripts to detect search engine bots and serve them content optimized specifically for them.
Over time, Google and other search engines began to take action against cloaking. In 2006, Google publicly sanctioned BMW Germany for using the technique, temporarily removing the company's website from search results. This case became a landmark that marked a before and after.
Google considers cloaking a form of deception and manipulation of its algorithms. Your goal is to provide users with the most relevant and useful results, and cloaking contradicts this principle by showing different content to bots and real users.
Penalties for using cloaking can be severe, including:
- Lower the site's page ranking.
- Complete removal of the site from search results.
- Loss of trust and reputation with Google.
Furthermore, once detected and penalized, it can be very difficult to regain the trust of search engines. Creating high-quality content, improving user experience, and following Google’s official guidelines are safer and more effective ways to improve your website rankings, even if they are more complicated.