What is "Cloaking" and how does it effect search results?
Cloaking
Cloaking is a Black Hat method of providing the search engine with one type of page and the visitor/reader with a different page.
For example let's say you were a green environmental organization and you wanted to attract visitors who were actually looking to buy an SUV, and you wanted a chance to dissuade them from doing so. You might create a page about SUV features for the search engines to find when they are out indexing pages on the web, but when a visitor later clicks the link hoping to go to a page with SUV Features on it, they actually come to a page that teaches them about the damage SUVs can do to the environment.
Search engines have largely wised up to cloaking. In any case it is bad business practice. Best practices for the web mean delivering value to your customers and prospects every day. From that perspective, tricking them with false search results is definitely not good business, even if you could get away with it.
Just a thought.





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