Cloacking -- as in stuffing random keywords to increase the density of your target keyword -- is so 1999. I certainly would not recommend it.

Cloaking in SEO terms is generally defined as being a system that delivers a different web page code to the search engine spider than it does to the Internet browser. The codes are usually substantially different, one being formatted to be search engine friendly while the other is meant to be more visitor friendly. Cloaking is frequently used to manipulate the search engines results and the search engines don't like it. Period.

Funny thing, I noticed today that there were a larger number than usual examples of cloaking going on in the Google SERPs. Cloaking seems to making another comeback. For every way that the search engines figure out how to filter cloaking, a new way emerges. This is one of those futile, long standing battles being fought by the search engines.

So that's it. Here is my advice. If you are looking to make a fast buck oin the Internet and don't care about the rules, then try your luck cloaking. You may win or you may lose. On the other hand, if you are looking to sustain long term top positions for competitive keyphrases, then read up on search engines guidelines, particularly the ones that they offer themselves and do the very best you can to play fair and do it for a long time.

Happy SERPs.

I agree with my canadian friend fred.

if you want to cloak some sites that you intend on crashing and burning, give it a try for fun. if you want to cloak your family's business website, you are a drunken fool.

cloaking violates nearly all search engine terms of services and is always grounds for removal. you dont want to end up filing a reinclusion request.

seo's who deal with sites that are heavy in flash, or are graphic rich ... cloaking may present a risky alternative to a site overhaul. cloaking is a way of textually conveying this content to the bot. many search engines (including google) understand this dilemma and sometimes turn the other way.

the only site to my knowledge that has permission to cloak is the new york times. the seo's at the nyt were presented with a problem. most of the content of the site is accessable only through paid subscriptions. this keeps bots out. google wants the content. nyt wants more pages indexed in google. how can you organize the world's content without hte new york times? thus google and the nyt presumably have an agreement in place to allow this practice, since it's beneficial to both parties. very interesting, and a heated topic. for more about the nyt cloaking.

Well some cloaking program garantee that your site won't be bannded it is def black hat google doesn't allways ban you ( if you have enough money)!!! as we know in the case of BMW's german site and NY times now!

Huh? What do you mean? What happened with BMW's site?

They got kicked out of google for a few days becuase of cloaking on there german site!

Heh. Wasn't aware of that.

Hi,

DO NOT TRY THIS, it is illegal
Not recommended by any of the SEs, expecially the great Google

It's not illegal. You will never get arrested for cloaking. But it is against the terms of use of the search engines and will get you banned from their indexes if you are caught.