Search Engine Optimization Fast Facts, Last Updated:09/07/2010 Cloaking —any of several means to serve up a different page to thesearch-engine spider than will be seen by human users — isone of the most controversial methods of search engineoptimization. To wit, cloaking can be an illegitimate attempt tomislead search engines regarding the content on a particular Website. On the other hand, it can be used to provide human users withmore or less equivalent content that a search engine would not beable to process or parse. Another ethical use of cloaking isproviding accessibility to Web sites for blind people and peoplewith other disabilities. A good benchmark on whether a given act ofcloaking is ethical is precisely whether it enhancesaccessibility. |