Cloak and dagger games were a favorite pastime for us as children. All in good harmless fun we could pretend to be someone else, or disguise yourself completely. Science fiction has even taken it a step further, giving Harry Potter a cloak that renders him invisible!
Unfortunately we are not here to talk about science fiction or childhood fantasy. The online marketing world is also very familiar with cloaking. However, it has become far more sinister than an adolescent mind could conjure up.
Cloaking is a term used by black hat marketers referring to a way to get unapproved content to be displayed by the search engines. Consumers are expecting that their search results have been properly regulated by the search engines are playing right into the hands of the marketers.
Let's take a brief look at how search engines review content to see how cloaking works. With the billions upon billions of articles, blogs and websites there is no way that every line of text can be manually reviewed to assure that it falls in line with the policies of the search engine. The search engines instead use automated robots, or bots, to do these massive content reviews at a lightening pace.
Using the bots to review the sites is exactly what the marketers can use to their advantage to get their normally unapproved content in front of real website visitors. With some programming tricks, the marketer can tell their website to display one version of the site to the bots and another completely different version to a real live visitor. The bots get a toned down basic version that is sure to be approved and keep their website from being banned. While the real human visitor gets the site full of unapproved content.
Why would a marketer need to trick a search engine? Perhaps not surprisingly, that unapproved content can be precisely what sways the consumer to order a product or service based on false promises or unethical advertising. Cloaking lets the marketer avoid a shutdown of their site while continuing to show the highest converting, unapproved content.
Let's take a real life example, this technique is quite common in the affiliate marketing world, especially on products such as work at home opportunities and diet products. The search engines have very strict rules about what type of content can be used to market these types of opportunities and marketers have found that toeing the line often reduces their success rate. So, rather than try to build better approved content, the lazy marketer jumps on the chance cloak the search engine and keep their unapproved content in front of the consumer.
Taking a closer look at the work at home industry, cloaking is generally used to disguise fake news sites, or farticles. Which are setup as independent third party reviews of an opportunity, but in actuality are simple filled with fake testimonials and the types of offers that most search engines ban. However, at a recent check, we noticed no less than five farticles directly linking off of keyword and organic search results.
How does this affect the consumer? You should expect a certain amount of trust and transparency in the search results you are shown. After all, the search engines ban this type of content because they do not feel that it adds to the user experience they strive for. The result of cloaking is usually that the consumer feels burned by their purchase once they realize that the endorsement or advertisement they were sold on should never have been shown to them.
As always the take away is buyer beware, those sponsored ads and front page search results may not be as pure and clean as they seem!
Unfortunately we are not here to talk about science fiction or childhood fantasy. The online marketing world is also very familiar with cloaking. However, it has become far more sinister than an adolescent mind could conjure up.
Cloaking is a term used by black hat marketers referring to a way to get unapproved content to be displayed by the search engines. Consumers are expecting that their search results have been properly regulated by the search engines are playing right into the hands of the marketers.
Let's take a brief look at how search engines review content to see how cloaking works. With the billions upon billions of articles, blogs and websites there is no way that every line of text can be manually reviewed to assure that it falls in line with the policies of the search engine. The search engines instead use automated robots, or bots, to do these massive content reviews at a lightening pace.
Using the bots to review the sites is exactly what the marketers can use to their advantage to get their normally unapproved content in front of real website visitors. With some programming tricks, the marketer can tell their website to display one version of the site to the bots and another completely different version to a real live visitor. The bots get a toned down basic version that is sure to be approved and keep their website from being banned. While the real human visitor gets the site full of unapproved content.
Why would a marketer need to trick a search engine? Perhaps not surprisingly, that unapproved content can be precisely what sways the consumer to order a product or service based on false promises or unethical advertising. Cloaking lets the marketer avoid a shutdown of their site while continuing to show the highest converting, unapproved content.
Let's take a real life example, this technique is quite common in the affiliate marketing world, especially on products such as work at home opportunities and diet products. The search engines have very strict rules about what type of content can be used to market these types of opportunities and marketers have found that toeing the line often reduces their success rate. So, rather than try to build better approved content, the lazy marketer jumps on the chance cloak the search engine and keep their unapproved content in front of the consumer.
Taking a closer look at the work at home industry, cloaking is generally used to disguise fake news sites, or farticles. Which are setup as independent third party reviews of an opportunity, but in actuality are simple filled with fake testimonials and the types of offers that most search engines ban. However, at a recent check, we noticed no less than five farticles directly linking off of keyword and organic search results.
How does this affect the consumer? You should expect a certain amount of trust and transparency in the search results you are shown. After all, the search engines ban this type of content because they do not feel that it adds to the user experience they strive for. The result of cloaking is usually that the consumer feels burned by their purchase once they realize that the endorsement or advertisement they were sold on should never have been shown to them.
As always the take away is buyer beware, those sponsored ads and front page search results may not be as pure and clean as they seem!
About the Author:
Reviews You Need is the premier online resource for all the marketing reviews, tips and tricks that consumers should be aware of before going online. Checkout our in depth reviews of the latest Income At Home businesses.
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