Cloaking Checker

Please enter a valid URL.

Add This Tool To Your Website!

If you want to add this tool to your website, copy and paste the following HTML into your code.

What is Cloaking?

There are many poor quality websites out there, whether through a lack of skilled design or attention. If they are without strong keywords, good internal and external links, and regular content updates, then they are likely to rank poorly on search engine results pages for their chosen search terms. In this case, they may resort to black hat search engine optimisation techniques in order to try and boost their visibility.

Sites can be penalised and even blacklisted by search engines if they are discovered to be using these techniques. Cloaking is one such technique which is heavily frowned upon. This involves writing two different versions of a site: one for human users, another for search engine crawlers. Whenever a crawler accesses a site to find data, a site will recognise it as such and present a version of the page which has different content to the one a human user will see.

Why do sites use Cloaking?

The fake page that a crawler will see is usually stuffed with keywords, in order to make it seem more relevant to certain search terms than the actual page is, therefore attaining a higher rank. When the site appears at the top of a search engine results page, human users will be under the impression that it is the most relevant to the search terms they entered. However, as the search engine has been misinformed, the site may feature content which bears no relation.

This is often used by sites which contain viruses or spyware, or even pornographic content, luring unsuspecting users in with a false sense of security before spamming them with irrelevant material. However, while it is easy to see the logic behind cloaking, it can also backfire. A user is likely to leave a site upon seeing that its content is not as advertised, even if it is an otherwise useful site. However, if the cloaked site relies on click revenue for income, then you are providing it with business just by accessing it, even in ignorance.

How does the Cloaking Checker work?

At Optimization.co.uk, we provide a free cloaking checker which can help you detect which sites are legitimate and which are trying to deceive search engines and users. To do this, simply type a website’s address into the search box. Our cloaking checker will then go to work and assess the site, and tell you whether it really is relevant to your search terms.

This can be helpful to an SEO campaign, particularly if you are searching for sites which may provide worthy link building opportunities, as it will allow you to narrow the search down. Whilst it can be tempting for websites to use cloaking, particularly those which will generate income from every click through, the risks of being caught are great. Not only will your site be removed, but being blacklisted could greatly affect any further attempts to have a successful online business. It is much more rewarding to optimise a site using legitimate white hat methods, gaining a solid reputation with search engines and users alike for years to come, and maintaining it with the right treatment.