cloaking(from the English "cloaking" - to hide) - one of the black methods of search engine optimization of the site. Its main meaning is to show one html code of the page to the search engine, and another to the visitor. As a result, we get two versions of the same site on the same URL. One is aimed at the visitor, the other at the search robot.
You may be asking yourself, what is it for? The answer is quite simple: to maximize earnings affiliate programs for the site.
For example, if a page contains a lot of advertising in a prominent place, then the chances that the user will click on it are very high. But promoting a page with only ads would be foolish, because the search engine knows about the content of the page and the likelihood that such a page would be in the top is negligible.
Another thing is a perfectly optimized page for a search engine, in which there are no ads, but only optimized good content, which is tailored for keywords. This site will rank highly in the SERPs. However, this method of deception is very dangerous. If the search engine finds out about this, then the site will at least lose positions, and, most likely, will be thrown out of the index altogether.
How to do cloaking
I'll tell you a few words about how to make cloaking. This is done using a special script that distinguishes users from robots. Distribution is based on either User agent, or IP addresses.
- The User-Agent of each search engine is known to everyone, but this method is obviously a failure, because the robot can be encrypted under the user.
- The IP address is a more reliable method, but it's not perfect either. Firstly, assessors can access your site through a proxy server or in some other way and see the actual content of the site. Secondly, the ip-addresses of search engines are constantly changing and in order to receive up-to-date information, you will need to pay well.
Despite all the black methods of using cloaking, it has its advantages. Let's look at how it can be used for good.
Advantages of cloaking
- Content output in the required encoding depending on the browser settings;
- Improved design by replacing many elements with different badly indexed elements, like AJAX or javascript, etc. The user sees the same content in a convenient way, and the search engine easily indexes the same content, but in a lighter form.
Despite the advantages, cloaking is usually used not for the convenience of the user, but in order to wind up traffic for themselves and ultimately get money. I am not a supporter of black hat SEO, so I do not advise you to engage in cloaking. But if your competitors sin with this, then I advise you to complain about them through the form feedback in Yandex and
We often write about various technical things that our in-house arbitrage team, coaches and course students use. For example, one of the spy services for monitoring competitor ads is Adplexity.
Today we will touch on the topic of cloaking and everything connected with it. Many beginners often come across this term and ask us a lot of questions: what is cloaking? how to use it? how much do you need to cloak? and how effective is it?
So, if you are a beginner and want to learn more - make yourself comfortable. We begin our "journey to the cloaca" :)))
Introduction
cloaking- translated from English. to cloak - hide, cover, mask.
Cloaca- in arbitration slang - a service/tool for hiding any data from the advertiser/traffic source/CPA network.
With the help of a cloaca, you can hide information about an offer, a traffic source or a landing page to which we send traffic.
Hide, you ask? Who is it from? Yes, from anyone, for example:
Let's take it in order.
Do I need to hide from the advertiser or affiliate program?
Here the answer is obvious: no.
For those who have thought about the answer, here are a few simple arguments:
- Affiliate is your best friend: build good relationships with her, openly agree on the use of more gray landings, or creatives. It's better than quietly doing what you want
- hiding any data about traffic from an affiliate/advertisement is at least stupid: most often the fact of hiding is burned, and is punished by blocking you and depriving you of previously earned funds
- thinking that you can earn more by fraud than outright is a failed tactic. Even if you win 5-10k rubles in the short run, you will lose in the long run
Do I need to hide data from competitors and spy services?
Yes, in general, the idea of hiding your creatives, landing pages, pre-landers, and offers from monitoring services is a very useful idea.
But there is one "but". All spy services are working on bypassing cloaking. Even if the cesspool that you use can hide information from spy services now, it is not a fact that it will be able to tomorrow. The teams of developers of spy services are professionals and their task is to study new cesspool algorithms and bypass them. Well, it's their bread :)
Do I need to cloak moderation in traffic sources?
The question is ambiguous.
You must understand that any deliberate violation of the rules and policies of the traffic source is the path to bans, sadness, grief and memory of your blocked account.
If you're new to arbitrage and want to cloak to get higher CRs right away... don't rush.
You should first familiarize yourself with any source of traffic and merge the first money into white money. White hut has many advantages. One of them - a cloaca is not required. You approve completely white creatives, a whitened landing, without any hints of violations of the rules of Facebook, Adwords or any other resource.
If you are playing black hut, then you simply cannot do without cloaking.
How does moderation work with cloaking?
In fact, there are two solutions - cheap and not cheap.
Cheap is a substitution of the page for draining (land / pre-land) for moderation.
tracker
Arbitrage Tracker is a traffic distribution and tracking system.
Popular trackers in the CIS and the bourgeoisie:
You can google for the cost yourself, we have not used public cesspools for a long time. If you have experience with any cloaca, write about it in the comments!
Now our team is using a private solution, to which we acquired access at the invitation of our friends. The service does not have a name. We just call it "cloaca"))
Among benefits - private access(self-written software for 30-50 people maximum). The software is written under moderation requirements facebook and google adwords. That is, it works with the bases of their IP addresses. Plus - not so often banned by Facebook after moderation.
Private cloaking solutions have their advantages, but the cost and tasks of such software are more suitable for large teams than a single one.
The less smut with cloaca and bans - the more time for the spin itself, the scaling of bundles and tests. As a result = more earnings.
The cost of our cloaca just under $1,000 a month. But then again, you can’t just google such a service. Because it is made to order and serviced only for us.
On the other hand, remember that
Expensive doesn't mean perfect
Not a single cesspool will save your ads from a ban for a high number of user complaints. Her task is only to shove the creative.
It is for this reason that even if you pour gray bundles, you should try to bleach them.
Whitening creatives- the topic is also large and requires special attention, but in short, you can whiten the bunch like this:
- make good, relevant creatives that won’t fly away quickly due to complaints
- unify landing pages
- come up with your own approaches, hypotheses: how you can advertise this or that offer for a certain target audience
- use your own pre-lands, and not pressed re-pressed by everyone and sundry
What can we say in the end
Nowadays, cloaking is a great technique for arbitrating traffic, but only and ONLY when you already know what you need it for, when you understand offers, traffic sources, audiences, understand the principles of testing and at least at a basic level are familiar with moderation mechanisms and the operation of Facebook Business.
We hope the material was useful to you for informational purposes. We give more information in our paid training.
Would you like to see an overview of any tracker that is suitable for cloaking? Let us know in the comments :)
prepared by Bogdan, Head of Content Department at RichAdvert
We have released a new book "Content Marketing in in social networks: How to get into the head of subscribers and fall in love with your brand.
Cloaking is a semi-legal method search engine optimization. Its essence is that users and search engine robots see two different versions the same page.
More videos on our channel - learn internet marketing with SEMANTICA
Translated from English, this term means "mask, cover." This explains the purpose of this method of presenting information on the network. It's hard to get good copy that fits all the keywords. Therefore, optimizers create two versions of the site pages - one that users can easily read, and one that has all the keywords for robots.
The obvious advantage of this technique is that the site quickly reaches high positions in the SERP, and everyone gets their own: robots - an optimized page, and the user - readable text no spam and verbal garbage.
Cloaking is often used in. It redistributes and opens up different content for advertising moderators and target audience. This is done in order to fit the necessary text to the rules of the advertising network - using just one link to show two different sites.
Do not think that cloaking and doorway are one and the same. The difference is that the first method does not redirect the user to another page.
Why do you need cloaking
Cloaking is used not only to deceive search engines, but also for a simpler and convenient operation on sites. An example of black hat cloaking would be pages that rank for top keywords but actually contain ads or links that are not related to user queries.
There are also more innocuous reasons for using cloaking:
- Protect content from theft. The code that the owner prevents from copying is not visible to users.
- Issue sites in the desired language. For this, browser settings are used.
- Recognize the user's location by IP address.
- Save page design using methods that are not taken into account by search robots when adding pages to their system. The option that was created for search engines, the same in structure and content, is offered in the most favorable light for them.
How cloaking works
To create copy pages, you need not only knowledge in the field of programming, but also the ability to optimize the text for a search engine. You also need to have information about IP or User-agent.
The cloaking process is performed using scripts that run on a web server. They receive the request and direct the script to find the source. Their task is to find out who contacted them - a robot or a user, and show the desired version of the page. The parameter to determine the source of the request is the IP address or User-agent.
Using a user agent
This is the name of the method for checking the data of User-agent requests in the server. The name of the search robot is set, the script searches for this name in its database. If the server gives out the name of this robot, then the optimized page is displayed. In the case when the name is not in the list, the option of displaying the page for the user is issued.
This is an affordable and effective technique, but it has a number of disadvantages:
- It is easily recognized even at the user level. Enough to install special program, and using a fake name, go to the version for robots.
- The search engine, changing the name of the robot to one that is not in the script database, will open a page created for people.
Use of IP addresses
This method is very similar to the User-agent method in terms of how it works, but is considered the most efficient. Its essence is to recognize an IP address that cannot be faked. Any user or robot has its own individual address. The script checks the user's IP with its data about search engines. After this check, a page intended for each opens: the user has his own, the robot has his own.
Owning the addresses of these IPs, you can easily fool not only a robot, but also living people - search engine workers who sometimes manually check sites. The same page will open in front of them as in front of the spider.
The most reliable way to avoid being discovered when using cloaking is to combine both methods at once. Scripts are tasked with checking data when requested User agent and IP addresses.
Search engines against cloaking
Almost all search engines are against such methods of work. They believe that cloaking, like spam, clogs databases and interferes with the normal operation of search engines. When bots recognize such sites, they apply penalties to them.
Yandex is struggling with this method of popularizing sites, using pessimization - the site is losing positions in the search results for certain search queries. Thus, the search engine strives to have resources with useful content in the TOP-10.
Not only Yandex, but also others search engines fight cloaking and stop it different ways. It often happens that versions of server pages differ not only in the quality of the optimized text, but also in its absolute difference from the original. The robot looks at the text with keywords, and the user sees ads and links that are not related to the query.
But still, let us remind you once again that cloaking is not always evil. For example, Google selects the version home page site by region and user language.
If you intend to use cloaking or similar methods, remember that this may be a reason to block the site. But if you can prove that you are using such a technique for the benefit of users, you will be treated with indulgence.
