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Allowing search engines to spider 'hidden' content - best practice?

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Subject:  Allowing search engines to spider 'hidden' content - best practice?
Author:   stevejohnston:   view profile | all posts by this author | add to favourites
Date:   17:00:23 7 August 2007
 
The principles here are very simple, and in fact you do know it really, but you just wish it weren't so:

Any time you serve content at a specific URL to the Googlebot that is different from the content a browser-based visitor may see, you are cloaking. Google routinely tests URLs with its UserAgent spoofed to appear to be a browser, in order to track any potential differences in content that is Googlebot-dependent. Google is also inviting spam reports on a level not previously seen before, and they promise to investigate any submitted via a Webmaster Tools login. So it only takes a competitor to spot what you are doing and 'shop' you to get Google to pay special attention to what you are doing.

Cloaking deliberately is therefore a huge risk to your web site, as Google's reaction to such behaviour can be draconian, because, let's face it, you are trying to manipulate Google's view of your available information to gain traffic that you don't deserve.

Google Book search, on the other hand, does not work in the way you suggest. Google will show you the content related to the search term, but will, as you rightly say, not reveal all of the information from the rest of the book.

Your decision, therefore is whether you think the commercial consequences of publishing out all your pages of juicy content on page by page, URL by URL basis, are likely to be positive.

Steve Johnston
Google Consultant



 

 
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