Talk:Cloaking

message: Something needs to be added concerning sites like jstor, jwatch, ingentaconnect, etc, cloaking journal content that is indexed by Google.  Even if "legitimate", it still is cloaking since the search engine indexes content for public consumption that cannot be accessed without going through a pay wall.  -Rolypolyman (talk) 01:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think there's anything legitimate or special about it at all.  It's still deception to boost search rankings.  It should be presented right alongside all the other spammer techniques. Gigs (talk) 19:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Some useful information about the topic of ongoing SEO cloaking by academic journals: http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2007/07/web_spamming_by_academic_publi.html -Rolypolyman (talk) 04:51, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the key point that this form of cloaking has the approval of search engines  and also is (in the opinion of both Google and those publishers, and some independent commentators) not about deception to boost search ranking but about making the search engines more useful Nil Einne (talk) 16:51, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Google cloaking

message: Truth vs. Verifiability: This article has 5 references from search engines where they claim to delist cloaking sites, but fact is experts-exchange.com, webmasterworld.com, nytimes.com, and lioncity.net all have done cloaking for years, it's well known, and the major search engines do nothing.  Are you ready for IPv6? (talk) 18:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody said they delist all cloaking sites immediately.  They do certainly have a policy that they may delist cloaked sites at any time.  It made the news some time ago when one of BMW's websites was delisted for cloaking.I believe that experts-exchange.com, at least, no longer cloaks.  It changed things so the questions are visible (and are indexed by Google), but the answers are not visible (neither to humans nor to Google).  This is annoying, but not cloaking.  Compare, for instance,  and .  They did used to cloak (and I always reported them when they turned up in search results), but they don't seem to anymore.If you had specific links for the other sites that exhibited the cloaking, those might be helpful as points of reference, although maybe not to put in the article itself (too liable to change). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: webmasterworld.com lets search engines crawl the whole site, but anyone else after a couple pages suddenly gets their IP blocked for about a day and told they must pay $200 to regiter.  nytimes.com requires cookies to be enabled to view the site, except for search engines that they let crawl without cookies.  lioncity.net is one of many forums that block humans from viewing posts until they register, but lets search engines crawl all they want. webmasterworld has been complained about since around 2005 and nothing ever was done by google.  Are you ready for IPv6? (talk) 04:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Google doesn't consider it cloaking if people are blocked from viewing when they browse away from the actual search result.  As long as the first click is free, there's no cloaking.  As for nytimes.com, I seem to be able to browse just fine.  Requiring cookies from people but not spiders might technically be cloaking, but in practice it's not noticeable.  lioncity.net is definitely cloaking, but it's a pretty minor site and it's not surprising that Google hasn't caught it (I just reported it, don't know if that will do any good).I think it's true that people often get away with cloaking, but it's not like the anti-cloaking rules are completely unenforced.  They just aren't necessarily enforced for small-time violators, and for larger-scale violators they aren't necessarily enforced immediately.  Would you say that the US government doesn't punish tax evasion just because some people get away with it in practice?  I don't think the article is overly misleading, but a note that cloaking isn't necessarily dealt with in all cases would be useful, if we could find a source for that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Truth vs. Verifiability