Cloaking is a black hat SEO method where the webmaster configures a script that shows different content to the search engine spiders from what is shown to normal human visitors. There are two techniques to accomplish this.
1) The site controls the delivery of content based on the IP address of the user requesting the page.
2) The site controls the delivery of content based on the “user agent” or HTTP header of the user requesting the page.
Users identified as search engine spiders activate a server-side script that shows a different version of the page, usually containing content not present or invisible on the page fed to human visitors. The whole purpose of cloaking is to show a spam page to the search engines that is optimized for rankings but to show a friendly non-spam site to regular human visitors.
Cloaking is a “doorway page” technique. The idea is to get lots of spammy pages ranking for lots of keywords and bring quick traffic. Sites that cloak for what the search engines consider “deceitful” purposes are usually black-listed once spotted or ratted out by competitors.
Since the site’s content is considered “spectacular” to be ranking high, most sites that cloak have short-lived careers at the top of the search engines, therefore cloaking should only be practiced on “expendable” domain names.
IP delivery is considered the most effective form of cloaking. This form references a database of known search engines spider IP addresses and serves a spam page to those IP addresses while it displays the main content page to all other IP addresses. IP delivery isn’t illegal or against terms of service though, since it is also used to geographically target visitors on white hat sites to show geographically significant content. Google itself uses IP delivery in it’s Adsense and Adwords programs to show custom content to visitors worldwide. Many of the most popular websites like Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo actively use IP delivery. None of these have been banned from search engines because, according to Google, their intention is not deceptive.
Here are three IP delivery cloaking scripts you can use:
*RECOMMENDED* KloakIt Just $99.95 for one domain! $999.95 for unlimited domains!
Fantomaster Webmaster Suite $560
IP-delivery $995
This site serves as a source of truth regarding tools, products, and services of interest to marketers who use “black hat” tactics.