10
votes
Accepted
Does text-shadow CSS affect SEO ranking by risking a cloaking penalty?
Google penalizes for text that is not visible to the users. White text on a white background can be used for keyword stuffing. In that case the keywords are put in the page source where Googlebot ...
- 97.8k
4
votes
Accepted
Hide joyride (intro javascript) for Googlebot
I would not recommend hiding joyride from Google because google can treat that as Cloaking.
It won't be negative for your SEO if you implement that on your web.
How Googlebot Crawls Javascript
- 3,888
4
votes
Accepted
Can I hide ads for Googlebot so it loads my site faster?
What you're describing is definitely cloaking. "Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines," according to Google. That means you'd be ...
- 5,194
4
votes
Accepted
How to specify paywall contents for multiple pages
Unless I have misunderstood something, the example in that guide only deals with 1 particular subpage https://example.org/article
Structured data for paywalled content needs to be done on a page-by-...
- 15.6k
3
votes
Accepted
isAccessibleForFree and cloaking
Does this mean that no matter if the user is logged in or not the server should send the full article which will hide content, if user is not logged in just via CSS?
No, at least that is not what I ...
- 4,297
3
votes
Hide a privacy policy banner from GoogleBot
You do not need to hide the GDPR efforts from Google at all. If at all, it is an excellent signal towards any search engine that you are law abiding and you have Privacy Policy in place and take Data ...
- 584
3
votes
Accepted
Personalized content for users who came from Google SERPs: cloaking?
As far as i know Youtube delivers personalized videos only if you are logged in. When i open a private browsing window and go to https://www.youtube.com/ they show me generell video categories and say ...
- 503
2
votes
Is it considered cloaking if I show different content to users depending on wether or not the pageview was a "landing"?
Per Google's definition, this could be considered cloaking.
It really depends on how much the content varies and if it's consistent otherwise. There's bound to be some give but Google is the only ...
- 3,983
2
votes
Hide joyride (intro javascript) for Googlebot
As far i understand joyride is a piece of html code, which displaying is triggered by a javascript to the news visitors, who doesn't yet have your cookie.
In this case you can easily hide your ...
- 10k
2
votes
Accepted
Could using SEO title and SEO excerpt be considered a form of cloaking?
Cloaking is when you present one page to a search engine that is different than what you present to users. What you are describing is something entirely different. I will explain.
I describe in ...
- 32.8k
2
votes
Accepted
Would using mouse movement to change how the page is rendered be considered "cloaking" to Google?
This kind of issue depends on the intent behind what you're doing.
Google has two kinds of penalties: Algorithmic penalties and manual actions.
1) I don't think your setup would ever trigger an ...
- 271
2
votes
Accepted
Is this site cloaking to hide my backlink from spiders?
You should wait, or better use Ahrefs. Everything is ok with the backlink - look at screenshot from Ahrefs.
Regarding Google cache - it is pretty inertly. Beside of this it should not be used to know,...
- 10k
2
votes
Will disabling javascript be considered as cloaking by Google
If you remove the JavaScript from the page based on IP, User Agent or any other method that detects Google, then yes its cloaking.
Treat Google like any other user. Angular websites are indexable ...
- 32.9k
2
votes
SEO cloaking rules when deferring loading content only after user interacting
What you're talking about is called an infinite scrolling page (E.g. TechCrunch which just loads a new article as you keep scrolling down).
The SEO advice from Google regarding the matter is to ...
- 166
2
votes
Accepted
seo implication of taking user to some other link rather than href given on anchor through javascript
It's considered link cloaking, the major search engines will not appreciate this behaviour, nor will users. You should always adopt a transparent links policy, that way you run no risk of annoying ...
- 32.9k
2
votes
Accepted
Will I get penalized by Google for cloaking if I redirect mobile users to a sub domain?
Having a mobile subdomain and redirecting users there is absolutely fine with Google. Google maintains a guide for setting up your mobile site. In it Google says they support three types of mobile ...
- 97.8k
2
votes
Accepted
For cloaking, what is the difference between the two examples Google gives: changes based on user agent, and text instead of flash to bots?
I don't see the point in the question since cloaking is rather simple, what your users see, is what search engines should see. Analysing what one Google employee has written changes nothing and ...
- 32.9k
2
votes
Accepted
If I hide some scripts from Google bot, will it be considered as cloaking?
From Google:
For optimal rendering and indexing, always allow Google access to the JavaScript, CSS, and image files used by your website. If your site's robots.txt file disallows crawling of these ...
- 15.6k
2
votes
Cloaking risk for load balanced Drupal site where new content may take a while to get to all servers
What you are describing is not cloaking. Cloaking is serving different content to Googlebot based on the user-agent header. In the senario you describe, both users and Googlebot have the chance ...
- 97.8k
1
vote
Cloaking risk for load balanced Drupal site where new content may take a while to get to all servers
I believe you have two databases corresponding to the two nodes. Maybe you can move the database to a separate machine or a cloud service (like AWS RDS for example). After such a setup, any change ...
- 2,313
1
vote
Accepted
Is search engine cloaking caused by JavaScript changing the document object model?
Using JavaScript to mutate the DOM would not usually be considered cloaking. These days Googlebot can execute JavaScript and sees pages as they are rendered to users once JavaScript has run.
It ...
- 97.8k
1
vote
Could changing the download link and screenshots based on user agent be considered cloaking?
For usability, you should allow users to download the software for a different OS. For example, because the user has multiple OS and wants the software for a different one, or because the one buying ...
- 21.7k
1
vote
Can I disallow JS scripts in robots.txt for Googlebot if the website degrades to offer equivelant non-JS functionality?
I think that Google has made it relatively clear that it wants to be able to access all of a page's content. And because javascript can lead to very vunerable scripts such as malware, viruses and ...
- 4,778
1
vote
Does text-shadow CSS affect SEO ranking by risking a cloaking penalty?
HTML code and CSS code errors if written poorly or outdated don't really matter for actual SEO and rankings on thier own.
Unless these erros are causing other issues such as user experience which ...
- 3,888
1
vote
Is it cloaking to hide a <canvas> and display a message for mobile browsers?
I think it will be okay, but to be sure give your users a link to the "desktop" version somewhere so nothing is cloaked.
- 503
1
vote
Eliminating need to create near-duplicate content
The same URL should have the same content. As for cloaking that only comes into play if you are presenting one set of content to Googlebot and another set of content to the end users. If you are ...
- 10.2k
1
vote
Accepted
Is it considered cloaking if I show different content to users depending on wether or not the pageview was a "landing"?
Based on a strict reading of Google's webmaster guidelines and definitions it is considered cloaking, it may not have been designed to present alternate content to Google over the users but as it has ...
- 10.2k
1
vote
Does an age confirmation overlay screen on the landing page for a porn site negatively effect SEO?
Google recently announced an update to their mobile search results concerning content that is obscured by pop ups and overlays. (or interstitials)
Helping users easily access content on mobile
...
- 6,117
1
vote
How to hide product prices from search engines when they vary by country?
There are two ways you could handle it - unfortunately both are not ideal solutions...
You could remove the microformats markup from your pages - but this will affect the people both in the US and ...
1
vote
Accepted
Is it considered blackhat to show structured data to search engine bots but not humans?
Cloaking is when you show content to a search engine that is different than what you show to a user.
Google tests web pages from outside of it's own network and you will never know. If there is a ...
- 32.8k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible