April 11th, 2010 by Nick

The increased use of search engines has been invaluable to both consumers and businesses. However, with so many companies now using search engines for their web pages, there has also been an increase in misuse and deception towards consumers.

Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer for a moment and consider you are running a search on Google, for instance. When you type in your search words or keywords, vast amounts of web pages will usually pop up. Out of all these web pages, there are highly likely to be several which have absolutely nothing to do with the subject in which you were searching for. More often than not, this is because keywords can be interpreted differently and the search engine cannot determine different meanings for the same words. However, when handling your own SEO techniques, it is important to be aware of the line between mistaken searches and consumer deception.

Search engine websites such as Google do have strict rules and guidelines on the way in which a company handles its search engine optimization techniques. We may know the basics of aiming your keywords and web content at consumers, but there needs to be clear definition between making your website relevant to consumers within search engines, and just making your website appear within search engines.

Cloaking is an SEO technique that is frowned upon by search engines and reputable suppliers of SEO services, but it is used quite often to increase the number of times a web link will appear in a search engine, thus increasing the number of clicks through to your web page. When using search engine optimization it is crucial that you are not guilty of cloaking and using substitute web pages.

Cloaking is a term used for when a website purposefully deceives the consumer in terms of what their actual website has to offer. When creating links and keywords, you will use search engine optimization to make your web page appear both to search engines and to customers. It is worth remembering that a search engine is not a human, so it will detect your website using a specific IP address or user-agent, and if this link is not reflective of the web content then you may be guilty of cloaking.

The use of java script is also a common way in which cloaking occurs. A web page can display different information to java enabled and java disabled searchers. A search engine, for example, will not be java enabled, meaning that the web content they are shown can differ from what a consumer who is java enabled will see.

The reason a lot of companies are guilty of cloaking is because it simply increases the number of times their keywords and web pages appear, which can rank them higher within a search engine; enabling them to be closer to the top and create a higher rate of clicks to their website. Be cautious with your search engine optimization, as purposefully deceiving your customers can sometimes result in a ban from specific search engines, which is only going to brand you with a bad reputation.

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