What is Cloaking?

[jaimehopkin]

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable.

The purpose of cloaking is sometimes to deceive search engines. so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed (black hat SEO).

[steveschmidt85]

Cloaking is Blackhat SEO techniques and most of the search engine know about it. So using such kind of blackhat techniques will be damage your site's SERP ranking.

[uthra]

Cloaking is another sleight-of-hand SEO technique. For SEO purposes, cloaking a site is a method of delivering a page based on who is requesting the page. For example, if a web site is using cloaking, when a regular visitor comes to the site, that visitor will see one page. But when a search crawler comes to the site, it sees a much more relevant, better optimized site.

[impoorvi]

Cloaking is a black hat technique of SEO. When a website have two different instance for search engines and visitors then it is called cloaking.

[stuartspindlow]

Cloaking is considered a black hat form of SEO designed to trick search engine crawlers into boosting a web page's search results ranking.

[lukejace]

Cloaking is the process of providing the search engine with one set of web Page while the Internet customer receives an attractive web page. Cloaking is basically a black hat SEO technique in which one page is redirected to other.

[nancydoll]

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines.