Search Engine Cloaking - What It Is?

Cloaking is a search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users' browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of whatever is requesting the page.

The only legitimate uses for cloaking used to be for delivering content to users that search engines could not parse(like MacromediaFlash).However, cloaking is often used to try to trick search engines into giving the relevant site a higher ranking; it can also be used to trick search engine users into visiting a site based on the search engine description which site turns out to have substantially different content.

Often when you get a high ranking page under quality keywords the first thing that will happen is your page gets stolen (called PageJacking). Often that page is stolen just to put up a duplicate some where and reduce your rankings. Yes, that is what happens with many engines. They see the duplicate and think "duplicate" and mysteriously your page disappears in the next search engine update.So, it's easy to imagine what happens on what's regarding cloaking. Search engine cloaking is just one aspect of a much bigger picture. This is why search engines can't even consider banning cloaking. It is so widespread and pervasive, they'd have to delete 1/4th of the domains in their indexes - those would be the best sites they have listed.