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Back in May of 2007 I wrote about people stealing your traffic by altering your content prior to rendering (or serving up) the page. Today I recieved an email about Google’s new measures to combat cloaking.

Google’s opinion on “undetectable” cloaking

In his recent blog post, Google’s Matt Cutts commented on a Danish company that offered ‘undetectable’ cloaking to its customers. Google tried to check if this claim was true and they quickly found a website that used the services of the company. It turned out that their cloaking wasn’t undetectable at all:

“If someone is trying to manipulate Google by deceptive cloaking, it means that a webserver is returning different content to Googlebot than to users. That’s a condition that can be checked for by algorithms or manually, and such cloaking is certainly not ‘undetectable.’”

Basically, if the page on the server is different from the page the user sees - Google considers this cloaking. And Google is about to start kicking *ss and taking names — if it already hasn’t begun.

Try it. Get caught monkeying with the content and Google will drop you from their index. And frankly I say good riddance, it serves you right for trying to trick the wee spiders

But seriously, I’ve never liked these change scripts altering your work because as a content creator, my stuff gets published quite a bit (which is flattering) but when the publisher then steals MY traffic by programmatically embedding links into the page “on the fly” - well, I’m rooting for Google on this one!

So, if you think you can outsmart the G-Man… think again. Google is watching and looking for cloakers. If you are currently using some of the more popular text switcher programs (and you know who they are) you should stop immediately - or risk having your website delisted. On second thoughts, keep it up (6)

If you’ve been reading this site for a while you will know I advise clients on various forms of internet marketing including SEO and SEM. And from time to time I cross paths with self-proclaimed SEO/SEM experts who make no bones about the fact they don’t like my approach to this subject. Why is this? Mostly because I am open about the industry, have no secrets and tell people the facts about the current state of SEO and SEM.

So how do you tell if you are dealing with an unethical SEO/SEM expert? According to Google there are few clear signs, and these are as follows:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. [THIS IS THE BIGGY...]

In fact, if the self-proclaimed expert alleges a “special relationship” with Google, or claims “we work with Google” or states they receive advice from Google, or claims to have a “priority submit to Google” … heed my advice. RUN! Google does not do this. See their policy document below.

Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.

Again, SEM/SEO has gotten a bad name because of so-called ‘experts’ because there really are no secrets. Google lays it all out in their directives to webmasters about what is good and what is not. Basically, if the ‘expert’ is vague - RUN! Their actions may harm you, your site, and your business.

And the list goes on. In fact for Google’s own word on the subject read this:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

And lastly, here are a few more ‘warning’ signs the SEO/SEM Expert is questionable:

1. They own and use shadow domains
2. They put links to their other clients on doorway pages
3. They offer to sell keywords in the address bar
4. They don’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
5. They guarantee ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
6. They operate with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
7. They get traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
8. They have had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google!

http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Remember, if in doubt - don’t…

Back to the “Deadly Sins of Advertising” tomorrow