{"id":10022,"date":"2011-01-05T06:48:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T05:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=10022"},"modified":"2014-02-25T12:52:22","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T12:52:22","slug":"google-renewing-efforts-to-unmask-cloaked-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/webmasters\/google-renewing-efforts-to-unmask-cloaked-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Renewing Efforts to Unmask ‘Cloaked’ Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

by James Barry from internet marketing<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There has been a lot of recent buzz<\/a> on leading SEO news sites about Google re-focusing its efforts to fortify its anti-cloaking tactics. (\u201cCloaking\u201d is decidedly black-hat \u2018bait-and-switch\u2019 manouevre that redirects a search engine\u2019s e-bot indexing program to a different, seemingly legitimate, site than a user clicking on a link would be directed to.)<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Matt Cutts twigged the search engine literati to Google\u2019s renewed anti-cloaking efforts with his recent Tweet<\/a> that: \u201cGoogle will more at cloaking in Q1 2011. Not just page content matters; avoid different headers\/redirects to Googlebot instead of users.\u201d<\/p>\n

Granted, Twitter forces us all to mangle our grammar, but the point is clearly made: the search leader is going to focus more resources on what seems to be an old, but evolving, SEO tactic that is clearly \u201cout-of-bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Search Engine Land\u2019s Barry Schwartz<\/a> notes, \u201ccloaking \u201cis a clear violation of Google\u2019s webmaster guidelines, which define the \u2018black-hat\u2019 tactic in the following terms:<\/p>\n

\u201cCloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Schwartz observes, Google already seems to do \u201ca good job with detecting cloaking of different headers and redirects, and of course cloaking content.\u201d Yet as he also notes, the Matt Cutts Tweet has caused a perceptible online stir<\/a> regarding what was meant by the Tweet, and what has put the \u201ccloaking\u201d burr under Google\u2019s saddle.<\/p>\n

My speculation is that the message about renewed anti-cloaking efforts may be related to McAfee\u2019s report on Threat Predictions<\/a> for 2011. The Los Angeles Times<\/em> reports, not surprisingly, reports that McAffee is forecasting a surge in unethical\/cyber-criminal activity surrounding the shortened URLs utilized by social media platforms, particularly Twittter. Google may also be concerned that these shortened URLs \u201ccan easily mask and lead users to malicious websites.\u201d<\/p>\n

The L.A. Times<\/em> reports that, \u201c(m)ore than 3,000 are shortened per minute.\u201d That kind of surge in online activity, with its potential for SEO<\/a> skulduggery, is sure to gain the attention of Google\u2019s web cops. There\u2019s an old saying: \u201cBuild a better mousetrap, and some damn fool will come up with a smarter mouse.\u201d Or, in this instance, a mouse that thinks<\/em> its smarter than the other mice . . . as well as the cat<\/em>!<\/p>\n

James Barry is a freelance writer who covers internet marketing<\/a> and related topics for Wolf21.com<\/a>, a Toronto-based firm offering a full product line of SEO services.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by James Barry<\/a>
\nThere has been a lot of recent buzz<\/a> on leading SEO news sites about Google re-focusing its efforts to fortify its anti-cloaking tactics. Google\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Matt Cutts twigged the search engine literati to Google\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s renewed anti-cloaking efforts with his recent Tweet<\/a> that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[518],"tags":[389],"class_list":{"0":"post-10022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-webmasters","7":"tag-google"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}