SEO

maybe because my forum is the only one out there for a very tight niche. I do very well, and my members love me for what I do for them, so don't knock it.

If I get this correctly, the only things that makes this hack cloak is that it checks for googlebot. Just the cookie alone is not clocking right?

When the engines receive content different from what the user receives, it's cloaking.

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so technically, if I make a site that makes a cookie and inputs their geographic info into that cookie and then next time the guest visits displays that information, technically that is cloaking? because obviously google wouldn't see any information ebcause they don't have cookie support. if that is true, then that very innocent, simple and common feature must mean massive amounts of sites are cloaking

Any site relying soley on cookies is a design flaw.

The bot can still get to your Location. The cookie simply saves you a step for convienence.

To be noted, its usually not the same page either.

ie,

load site.com
click USA

end up on
site.com/en

come back visit #2, auto directs you to /en.

this is NOT cloaking.

So that is a yes to my hypothetical?

you're mis interpreting it.

a good exmple.
go to
UPS Global Home

you get the location drop down.

pick USA, english

you end up on

Welcome to UPS


There's no cloaking involved. it's a totally different page.

they don't seem to cookie, but if they did, imagine now closing out your browser, and then re-entering ups.com. You would automatically end up at Welcome to UPS instead of ups.com/

brian I understand your examples. I am asking if my hypothetical use of a cookie is cloaking in the example I gave a few posts before.

at the end of the day, do what you want. it's your site and you will reap the SE consequences if they come.

your asking for my/our suggestions, and i'm suggesting against it. so, good luck and i'll see ya in the next thread, possibly titled "Help! I got banned from google"

I am not arguing with you. I just want to clearly understand what is cloaking and what isn't. If a simple use of a cookie is cloaking then my mind is spinning (in my example).

Great question.

You can, in fact, even detect geographical location based in the IP of the user without cookies. Any script can take the referring IP, figure out where its located, and then generate a customized version of the page based on that.

Cookies are an easy way to do this as well, as you noted.

If we look at the definition, it basically focuses on "different versions" of a page to search engine bots and users:
define:cloaking - Google Search

You have effectively identified a gray area.

Does the content displayed for users differ significantly from the basic content delivered to search engines, where a reasonable person would believe it was done in order to be deceptive?

Geo-customizable content like weather widgets are certainly not, in practice, a deceptive addition to the page.

Adding geo-specific links to a page would change the page content. Search engines could not accurately determine which links would display for any particular user due to varying geo locations.

Replacing the entire content such as articles that are geo specific causes the search engines to have complete uncertainty about what content they are sending to their search users.

When we think of cloaking in the traditional sense, it's very cut and dry. We imagine scenarios like ranking for say an obscure electronic product, and then replacing it with a page full of affiliate links to adult sites, etc.

Simply placing a weather widget, or demonstrating your knowledge of their geo location would not likely cause a problem with search engines.

Changing the content significantly, especially to a new topic, can/will get you blacked listed.

Keep in mind that Google AdSense provides geographic determination and adjustment as well. So they are aware that certain widgets like this can add value to the page without significantly altering (aka cloaking) the content.

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I see, very good respone and I understand now. I suppose this will be an on going battle with webmasters on balancing the line between.

btw, the hack does allow you to specify how many posts a guest can view before recieving that message.

This is exactly where site design and structure comes into play.

say you have

site.com/weather/

/weather/ should be a general 'news' page, and not contain anything related to cookies, ip, etc as the main content switch.

then

site.com/weather/90210/

should be beverly hills-specific weather


beverly hills weather should NOT be the focus of the main landing page, cookies, logged in, ip, or otherwise.






*sings 90210 theme song* lol
/shame

There are good reasons, however, why (from a marketing perspective) you could want every page on your site to have geo specific content.

A very generic example would be an International news site. All content on the site is the same for everyone. However, whenever a user lands on a page there is a side navigation bar that lists only links to articles on the site associated with their geographical area.

The main page content would be the same.

And the custom content would be a great tool to help get the user to dig deeper into the site, find content that may be specific to their interests, and may encourage linking to the content, etc.

We could wait until they register to provide them with this information. But having this information available immediately might actually be one of the factors that helps convert them from guest to registered user.

The fact that I had difficulty thinking of a better example, just further strengthens Brian's assertion that this is not an ideal site architecture.

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BBC - Homepage

they get away with it. international VS domestic versions.



google article about this whole mess
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: How Google defines IP delivery, geolocation, and cloaking

Perfect resource Brian. Thanks for posting that.

Interesting criteria that outline here. Treat Googlebot just like a user, based on its IP, instead of specifically customizing the content for Googlebot only. In other words, Google must see something that a user would see. If no user would ever see what Googlebot sees, then it sounds like you're in trouble.

This is what I was getting at when I referred to setting x > 5. That is, let the visitors see the content for the first few clicks. In this case, Google is talking about the first click only.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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