Cloaking (from the English cloak - mask, cover) — one of the methods black SEO, when the search robot and the user are shown different options the same page.
Readable texts are difficult to optimize for everything keywords, so webmasters develop 2 versions of site pages, for the user and for the robot.
Cloaking is a bit similar to the doorway method, however, it does not use automatic or manual redirection of the user to the desired page, which reduces the likelihood of competitors stealing the optimized page. But creating copies of pages is painstaking work, since it requires not only the basics of programming, but also the availability of data such as ip or user-agent of robots.
Cloaking, like doorways, can be divided into:
- Black is illegal, the user is shown text that does not correspond to the request, and the robot is shown optimized text material to increase ranking.
- Grey. Sometimes the content presented on the site can be printed or displayed in text form, which is why the same material can be presented in 2 or more versions. Links to such texts from other sites may cause them to be indexed and classified as non-unique. To prevent this from happening, a redirect is installed on secondary links, which redirects the link juice to the original source article. This method does not harm users and does not entail the imposition of filters.
- White is legal cloaking. Websites redirect users to make using the site easier. This is how geotargeting works.
How to create?
A user can be distinguished from a search robot using an IP address and User Agent. The robot is automatically shown an optimized page, and the user is shown standard site content. The following programs are used in the development of such sites:
- User Agent is the easiest way to cloak. The webmaster views the User Agent data, which contains the name of the search robot. One of the Yandex algorithms is known as Yandex/1.01.001 (compatible; Win16; I), knowing the names of robots, you can write a function for comparing the names of robots and User Agent of visitors and show each of them the required content. Easily detected - for this, using special programs, you just need to go to the site under the robot’s name and get a “corrected” site page. Most often, cloaking is determined in this way by competitors in order to “complain” about a fraudulent site to the service. search engine which will punish violators.
- IP address is the most effective way cloaking, search robots are identified by IP addresses, and it is quite difficult to falsify them. You can show users the site standard by selecting its pages from a special database - a robot cannot recognize such a scheme manually. But this method requires access to a database of addresses.
- Combined cloaking - a combination of checking User Agent and IP addresses. The method shows the highest results, but it is the most labor-intensive.
Cloaking and search engines
Almost all search engines recognize cloaking as illegal and suppress it in every possible way. Sometimes website pages differ not only in the quality of content optimization, but also in its total difference from the original. For example, a robot can see text material with keywords, and a user can see advertisements. As mentioned above, not all cloaking is a scam.
Cloaking is used by Amazon.com (shows products depending on previously open pages), Yelp.com, some Google services, NYTimes.com (you can register only after 5 clicks), ComputerWorld.com (users see ads, and the robot sees html text) and Forbes.com (to get to home page, you need to watch one commercial).
We often write about various technical things that our in-house arbitration team, coaches and course students use. For example, one of the spy services for monitoring competitors’ advertising is Adplexity.
Today we will touch on the topic of cloaking and everything connected with it. Many beginners quite often come across this term and ask us a bunch of questions: What is cloaking? how to use this? how much cloaching is necessary? and how effective is it?
So, if you are a beginner and want to learn more, make yourself comfortable. Let's begin our "journey into the cesspool" :)))
Introduction
Cloaking- translated from English. to cloak - hide, cover, disguise.
Cloaca- in arbitration slang - a service/tool for hiding any data from an advertiser/traffic source/CPA network.
Using a cloaca, you can hide information about the offer, the source of traffic or the landing page to which we send traffic.
Hide, you ask? Who is this from? Yes, from anyone, for example:
Let's take it in order.
Do I need to hide from an advertiser or affiliate program?
Here the answer is obvious: no.
For those who are wondering about the answer, here are some simple arguments:
- an affiliate is your best friend: build a good relationship with her, openly negotiate the use of more gray landing pages or creatives. It's better than quietly doing it the way you want.
- hiding any traffic data from an affiliate/advertising program is at least stupid: most often the fact of hiding is scorched, and is punished by blocking you and depriving you of previously earned funds
- thinking that you can earn more by deception than by earnest is a failed tactic. Even if you win 5-10k rubles in the short term, you will lose in the long run
Is it necessary to hide data from competitors and spy services?
Yes, in general, the idea of hiding your creatives, landing pages, landing pages, and offers from monitoring services is a very useful idea.
But there is one “but”. All spy services work to bypass cloaking. Even if the cesspool you use can hide information from spy services now, it’s not a fact that it can tomorrow. The development teams of spy services employ professionals and their task is to study new cloak algorithms and bypass them. Well, this is their bread :)
Is it necessary 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 the memory of your blocked account.
If you are new to arbitrage and want to cloak in order to immediately receive higher CRs... do not rush.
You should first get acquainted with any traffic source and lose your first money. White hut has many advantages. One of them is that a cloaca is not required. You will approve absolutely white creatives, a whitewashed landing page, without any hint of violations of the rules of Facebook, Adwords or any other resource.
If you are pouring black hat, then you simply cannot do without cloaking.
How does moderation work with cloaking?
Essentially, there are two solutions - cheap and not cheap.
The cheap one involves replacing a drain page (landing/prilanding) to undergo moderation.
Tracker
Tracker for arbitration is a traffic distribution and tracking system.
Popular trackers in the CIS and Burger:
You can google it yourself for the cost; we haven’t used public sewers for a long time. If you have experience working with any cloaca, write about it in the comments!
Our team is currently using a private solution, which we acquired access to at the invitation of our friends. The service has no name. We just call it "cloaca"))
Among benefits - closed access(homemade software for 30-50 people maximum). The software is written under moderation requirements facebook and google adwords. That is, it works with databases of their IP addresses. Plus - it’s not so often that Facebook bans after moderation.
Private cloaking solutions have their advantages, but the cost and tasks of such software are more suitable for large teams than for an individual.
The less trouble with the cesspool and bans, the more time it takes to unscrew it, scale the ligaments and tests. As a result = more earnings.
The cost of our sewer just under $1000 per month. But again, you can’t just Google such a service. Because it is made to order and serviced only for us.
But on the other hand, remember that
expensive doesn't mean perfect
Not a single cesspool will save your ad from being banned for a high number of user complaints. Her task is only to push creativity.
It is for this reason that even if you pour gray ligaments, you should try to bleach them.
Whitening creatives- also the topic is large and requires special attention, but in short, you can bleach the bundle like this:
- make good, relevant creatives that won’t quickly fly away due to complaints
- uniqueize landing pages
- come up with your own approaches and hypotheses: how you can advertise this or that offer to a specific target audience
- use your own landing pages, and not re-pressed ones re-pressed by everyone who is not too lazy
What can we say in conclusion?
Nowadays, cloaking is an excellent technique in traffic arbitrage, but only and ONLY when you already know why you need it, when you understand the offers, traffic source, audience, understand the principles of testing and at least at a basic level are familiar with moderation mechanisms and operation of Facebook Business.
We hope the material was useful to you for informational purposes. We provide more information in our paid training.
Would you like to see a review of any tracker that is suitable for cloaking? Write to us about it in the comments :)
prepared by Bogdan, head of content department RichAdvert
