Can Google recognize cloaked pages? Will it lead to any ban?

Yes, and possibly.

Why would you want to create a cloaked page, anyway?

I would ask myself whether it's the 'right thing to do', not whether I'm likely to get caught.

Originally Posted by gringo

I would ask myself whether it's the 'right thing to do', not whether I'm likely to get caught.

I agree, if you feel it's not the right thing to do, google probably does also and will block you or is working on a way to.

Originally Posted by Lucy

Can Google recognize cloaked pages? Will it lead to any ban?

If you are asking because someone set you up a cloaked page...I would start shopping for new help.

Lucy I think it depends on your reasons for cloaking. For example if you were cloaking a page so visitors in the U.S. saw words like 'color' and 'optimization' while visitors in the U.K. saw 'colour' and 'optimisation' then I don't think search engines will mind.

If on the other hand you're cloaking to show human beings one version of a page and search spiders a different version of the page in order to manipulate rankings then yes it is a big deal and the kind of thing likely to get your site banned.

Search engines generally look at cloaking as something done to manipulate rankings. There are some valid uses of cloaking, but you should decide if your particular case is one and be careful.

Originally Posted by vangogh

If on the other hand you're cloaking to show human beings one version of a page and search spiders a different version of the page in order to manipulate rankings then yes it is a big deal and the kind of thing likely to get your site banned.

Search engines generally look at cloaking as something done to manipulate rankings. There are some valid uses of cloaking, but you should decide if your particular case is one and be careful.

Does that make sense in today's world? It seems like on-page optimiszation is only going to go so far, probably not enough to tip the scales one way or the other.

I didn't mean it in the sense of optimizing on page. Don't you think a person visiting your site would prefer to see things written in a way that makes more cultural sense to them.

Instead of thinking of the spelling how about elevator or lift? How about apartment or flat? People in the U.S. and U.k use words differently. How about the word football. Means two different things depending on who's reading.

You can take it further. Let's say you've had your content written in English, French, Russian, and Japanese. Why not redirect people to the language version that matches the country indicated by their IP?

Cloaking can be done to provide a better user experience and I think if that's what you're doing you're probably fine. I think Google has said that IP cloaking is ok. Just make sure Googlebot sees the same thing a human being from the U.S. sees and things are ok.

Anytime you get involved with cloaking though you move further away from pure white hat seo and run the risk of a search engine not liking what you're doing. That doesn't mean you can't ever cloak. You should just make sure you're cloaking for a valid reason and be aware that a search engine might not think your reasons are as valid as you think.

Yep to what Steve is saying;

But that isn't cloaking, no matter how much the real cloaking fraternity try to spin it.
It is content delivery. SE crawlers get exactly the same content as any other visitor based on their IP geo-location.

Cloaking is detecting the IPs of specific user agents and delivering different content to them and will get you banned with no hope of a reprieve or re-inclusion

Can you identify Google by IP? I know Google spoofs their bot user agent id string, and with all the fiber optics they've been buying, it seems like a few secret IP addresses would be just as easy.

Also, I guess I'm showing my newbness, but what can you really hope to achieve this way? A different title, more h1 text? That won't many any real difference in the rankings, will it? Or are people trying to hide things from people?

I'm kinda new at this stuff. What's cloaking?

Cloaking is a bad idea, and it's a black hat technique...G hate black hats, and you might get banned if you are caught.

Originally Posted by greenraj

I'm kinda new at this stuff. What's cloaking?

Read it here:
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...s-defined.html

Originally Posted by Chronicle

Read it here:
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...s-defined.html

kewl thx

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Also, I guess I'm showing my newbness, but what can you really hope to achieve this way? A different title, more h1 text? That won't many any real difference in the rankings, will it? Or are people trying to hide things from people?

Generally the cloaked pages wont even be readable by a human, Youd get a headache after the first paragraph. Or more accurately youd get a headache where the first paragraph should be. They will just be one keyphrase after another.

5 years ago this kind of thing probably would have resulted in improved serps, But these days search engines have got pretty good and telling if a set of words makes any sense.

Thanks, St0x. Sounds like a bad idea all around.

John there is info around listing all the IPs Googlebot might use. Same for the other search engines. I don't know of any offhand, but I'm sure they're not too hard to track down.

Hi ,

Cloaking makes a site towards topper ?

Originally Posted by find07

Hi ,

Cloaking makes a site towards topper ?

No it makes the site banned from google.