For those of you who are unaware, the subject of cloaking has been a controversial one in the world of SEO and SEM for some time. Cloaking is essentially the technique of returning different pages according to who or what is requesting them. E.g. a search engine would be presented with a different page to that of a surfer unbeknowingly.

The purpose of cloaking for search engine optimisation can be for several reasons: to hide highly optimised pages from people so that they can't be lifted, or to provide search engine spiders with highly optimised pages that are lacking in visible content for search engines such as those sites constructed in Flash.

So, is it ethical, or could the practice get you banned? Depending on your views might determine whether you label it as 'cloaking' or 'IP delivery' meaning essentially the same thing except that when the search engines use it they call it 'IP delivery, of course!

The point is that the search engines do it all the time and there was some hilarity at the recent SES conference in London when it was related that Google banned itself inadvertently for precisely using this method! An example of when a search engine uses IP Delivery is when it chooses to determine which country you're in and serves you www.google.co.uk even when you've keyed in www.google.com into the browser. Or even when it displays AdWords targeted towards your country as opposed to another.

Certainly, at the SES Conference in Islington the week before last, there seemed to be much more tranparency and honesty surrounding the use of cloaking. Many top SEO companies openly admitted using it for what they considered to be extremely valid purposes.

So what did Google have to say on the issue? Magnus Sandberg, Software Engineer for Google stated: "As long as the purpose is benevolent, I would not call it cloaking"

I guess the message is 'be careful' in how you use it and your purpose for doing so, and, make sure you use a reputable company that carefully monitors IP addresses so that you don't make a hash of it.

Are you measuring your visitors' online behaviour when they visit your web site and do you really know which campaigns are providing a return on investment? If not, you might just as well hand over your open cheque book to ppc providers. Come along to our ClickTracks training event on 20th July and learn how one company was able to save in the region of £44,000 per year with no downturn in enquiries and sales:

http://www.searchengineworkshops.co.uk/click.htm