 Serving Different Content To Search Engine Spider? |
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 Mar 25 2008, 06:21 PM
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#1
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HR 3  Group: Active Members Posts: 63 Joined: 25-March 06 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 02:07 PM Member No.: 11,110  |
One of my client's competitors appears to be serving full page content to googlebot, but a login page to anyone else that requests these articles. Is this tactic kosher?
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Mar 25 2008, 06:27 PM
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#2
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 High Rankings Advisor  Group: Admin Posts: 29,201 Joined: 21-July 03 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 12:07 PM From: Ashland, MA Member No.: 2 |
It's called cloaking, and is generally frowned upon by the search engines (but not always).
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Mar 26 2008, 09:38 AM
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#3
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HR 3 Group: Active Members Posts: 63 Joined: 25-March 06 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 02:07 PM Member No.: 11,110 |
It seems like a lot of sites do this. While it would increase the amount of search engine traffic, I wonder how much good it does for the site. It's certainly at least a little irritating for the user. At the same time, it encourages the user to subscribe/register.
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Mar 26 2008, 01:45 PM
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#4
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 Psycho Mom Group: Admin Posts: 6,124 Joined: 21-July 03 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 01:07 PM From: Columbia, SC Member No.: 3 |
Can you see the full page content in Google's cache?
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Mar 27 2008, 10:12 AM
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#5
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HR 3 Group: Active Members Posts: 63 Joined: 25-March 06 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 02:07 PM Member No.: 11,110 |
QUOTE(Scottie @ Mar 26 2008, 02:45 PM)  Can you see the full page content in Google's cache? Actually, there's no "Cached" link in the Google listing |
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Mar 28 2008, 06:29 PM
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#6
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High Rankings Advisor Group: Admin Posts: 29,201 Joined: 21-July 03 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 12:07 PM From: Ashland, MA Member No.: 2 |
QUOTE(eggman2001 @ Mar 27 2008, 11:12 AM) Actually, there's no "Cached" link in the Google listing Which is another good indication that they're cloaking. |
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Mar 28 2008, 07:15 PM
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#7
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 Token male admin Group: Admin Posts: 1,436 Joined: 28-July 03 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 05:07 PM From: UK Member No.: 45 |
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Apr 6 2008, 10:30 AM
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#8
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HR 3 Group: Active Members Posts: 63 Joined: 25-March 06 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 02:07 PM Member No.: 11,110 |
Very helpful. Thanks.
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| ErinDecker |
Apr 22 2008, 09:29 AM
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#9
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Guests |
Would this be an example of requesting not to be cached?
QUOTE <meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" /> We have suspicions that a competitor is cloaking their site with ours, but we are having a difficult time proving it. I am able to see a cache in Google when I search for them and it appears legit, but in their source code, they have included the above. Any thoughts on tell-tale signs of cloaking besides the "no cache" one? Thanks! |
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Apr 22 2008, 11:35 AM
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#10
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 Convert Me! Group: Admin Posts: 17,377 Joined: 17-August 03 User's local time: Feb 9 2010, 11:07 AM Member No.: 551 |
That one isn't going to affect the search engines Erin. And yes I realize it's confusing since everyone refers to it as caching and that one says no-cache. That particular instruction is for browsers however.
A no cache instruction for the spiders would be part of the meta robots tag. And would look like CODE <meta name="robots" content="noarchive"> On the larger issue of cloaking, the easiest way to sort out if someone is cloaking or not if they're not allowing the engines to cache or archive content is to set up a browser to emulate Googlebot, etc. Even this wouldn't figure out those that trigger in the originating IP number, but most cloakers triger on the user-agent, not the IP number. |
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| ErinDecker |
Apr 24 2008, 08:06 AM
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#11
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Guests |
Thanks Randy!
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