Marketing is a bit of a cut-throat business and so is Search Engine Optimisation, so when the idea of trying some Cloaking Software was being bounced around the office I thought I´d find out a bit more about it before saying no. I won´t go into how it works here since it´s mentioned enough elsewhere, but after looking around I think it´s a bad idea.
The main one I looked at was searchenginecloaker.com since it was at the top of the paid ads on google. The first thing I noticed was that the site was blacklisted by google (and before you come on and say "We´re on MSN though!", yeah – them lot are really ethical! Oh, and MSN fans, don´t bother trying to stick up for them – I don´t care).
Next thing that I noticed was this guys marketing strategy. He´s good enough to know that forums are a good way of getting found but he always gets his comments edited for self promotion. There´s also the fact that if you try and search for Cloaking Software, most of the top results are from respectible web master forums and SEO sites recommending against them! Not exactly good advertising for them if they can´t get to the top for what they are selling.
There´s a few more things I found but we´ve basically decided not to bother. Not even on an unused domain to see if it would work. For a change I´ve left out all the technical stuff I usually throw in – it´s Monday after all.
Leave a comment, let the arguments begin! All cloaking software companies will have their links changed to whatever site I find most amusing that day.