Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique in which a website shows one version of a URL, page, or piece of content to the search engines for ranking purposes while showing another to its actual visitors. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. However, it can also be a functional technique for informing search engines of content they would not otherwise be able to locate because it is embedded in non-textual containers, such as video or certain Adobe Flash components.
Cloaking is generally frowned upon by search engines and is a violation of search engine guidelines. If a search engine recognizes cloaking, it will penalize the website by permanently removing it from the search engine index. Therefore, it is important to avoid cloaking in SEO and follow SEO best practices to ensure long-term business success.
