Cloaking
Cloaking is an SEO manipulation technique that shows search engines different content from what users see
What it means, how it is used and where it comes up, with its related concepts.
What it is and how it works
The server identifies the visitor by IP address or user agent and, if it detects a crawler, serves a version built to rank while people see something else. It has also been used to hide spam pages, deceptive redirects or illegal content.
Google explicitly lists it among the practices banned by its spam policies and may apply manual actions or remove pages from its index. Legitimately adapting content, for example by language or device, is not cloaking as long as the search engine and the person receive the same thing under the same conditions.
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