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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/06/2003 04:53 pm
I'm just looking for some recommendations on a good cloaking program from a reputable company. Which ones should I avoid? Which one is considered the best, but isn't too expensive? I understand SellWide has a very good reputation.
Fred
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14504
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Posted: 12/07/2003 06:00 am
Just looking at the nonsense on that company's website is enough to tell me that if I was going to use cloaking software I most certainly would not deal with a company like that. So little regard for the user experience and the search engines in general to churn out such rubbish.
I should imagine if you were going to use cloaking you would seek to do so in an elegant manner. Just my 2cents worth 
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/07/2003 06:53 am
Excell,
Are you not necessarily opposed to cloaking, but rather just against the say SellWide is promoting their cloaker product?
Could you recommend one you would personally use yourself? what should I be looking for?
The only choices I looked at so far are:
http://www.searchenginecloaker.com
http://www.cloaking-script.com
http://www.fantomaster.com
I need to increase my traffic substantially, and keep competitors away from my content. I am promoting a fairly competitive product that's an impulse buy, so I need to get lots of visitors to my sales copy. I would never use any deception to do so.
Fred
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14504
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Posted: 12/07/2003 08:41 am
I don't use cloaking and others will be better at giving you advise, my comment was purely based on the website's content (as in - if that is an example of the goods, then it doesn't look good to me).
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/07/2003 08:56 am
I know of one top affiliate, doing exactly what I'm doing who's making up to 20K/month, and he's using cloaking. I assumed his cloaking was likely a major factor in his success. All his visitors see a highly effective sales copy page, hence many buy the product, and he has a very high sales conversion rate.
I could keep creating as many new pages as possible each targeting under used, unpopular keyword phrases that will only get 2 or 3 hits/day each, but I would need to create hundreds of them in a timely manner just to scratch the surface of this market, while at the same time trying to avoid too much similarity between the pages. The task is daunting, and I don't see how there's enough time in an entire year to accomplish it.
Fred
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14504
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Posted: 12/07/2003 09:01 am
Well I guess that is why you are looking for an instant automated answer.. to turn a quick buck in this industry while you can... there are many how are succeeding at this. Some do it well, some do it very obviously.
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/07/2003 09:14 am
Yes very true. That's one thing I'm hoping to achieve, and that's what works well with my particular product. I could spend the next year manually cranking out new sales copy pages from Dreamweaver that will only get 3 hits a day, but that would take me the next year of working 12 hours a day / 7 days a week, to end up with anywhere close to the 1000 pages I will ultimately need. There are tons of under-used keywords that are easy to gain #1 Google rankings with, but they only fetch 2 or 3 hits a day at best. I doubt a competitor would want to steal such a page.
I am still evaluating searchenginecloaker.com, but I'm having my doubts about it. It lacks some capabilities I would prefer to have, and I'm not even sure if search engines can spider a .pl page inside a cgi-bin directory. The author of the script, admits to having been banned from Google for cloaking, because they went overboard and created 100,000 cloaked listings, and they've only had 2 customers out of 2000 get banned. Sell Wide said they've had none.
Fred
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 12/07/2003 10:33 am
Any cloaking software has the potential to get you banned from Google and the other engines. If you wish to cloak, this is a risk that you must recognize and be willing to take.
I do not use cloaking software, and I certainly do not advocate it. That said, if you choose to use it, with full understanding of the risks (and with your business partners or clients fully understanding the risks) then make sure you use the best product out there. Based soley on word of mouth, I would suggest you give consideration to fantomaster.
If SellWide has yet to have any clients get banned, it's likely either because they are a new company, or becuase they don't have a very large client base. It will simply be a matter of time. (I'm not saying that to slam their product, just saying that it's a game where the odds are stacked against them.)
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Ron C
Joined: Jul 23, 1999
# Posts: 1468
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Posted: 12/07/2003 10:54 am
I would never use any deception to do so.
The whole purpose of cloaking is to deceive someone. Unless you intend to deceive the visitors or the search engines or both, there is simply no reason to cloak.
Cloaking is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Although this is an extreme analogy, it's a bit like robbing banks for a living. It can be effective. It can be lucrative. But chances are pretty good there will also be a price paid somewhere down the road. How far down the road will depend on both luck and experience. Unless you are both very lucky and very smart, you'll make some mistakes and end up getting a few domains banned as you learn the ropes. Consider it the cost of education. With some experience, you'll learn to keep a domain alive a little longer, but "down the road" will still inevitably arrive. That's the nature of a short-term solution. Never, ever, ever cloak a domain you're not willing to lose. Never do it on a server you're not willing to replace. The cost of cloaking isn't nearly as high as the cost of robbing banks, but it's nonetheless a cost you must be willing to pay.
Want to hear a long-term solution? Stop thinking in terms of keywords and pages, and start thinking in terms of content. If you have a non-competitive keyword phrase you want to target, you do NOT need to devote a whole page to it. Give the visitors something actually useful to them, maybe even useful enough to garner a few links, and you can often successfully target three or five or dozen non-competitive phrases on the same page. Unlike cloaked pages, useful pages will survive algorithmic changes and can often stay in the SERPs for years. Long-term solutions take longer to implement, but also last a whole lot longer.
If you still think cloaking is a viable road (as I suspect you will), my advice would be to focus your investigation on Fantomaster. He pretty much invented the technology and has been extremely well known in SEO circles for years. Doesn't necessarily make him the best, I know, but it's probably where I would concentrate my attention.
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/07/2003 11:18 am
The only reason, I recently got interested in the concept of cloaking was because somebody I know who's doing exactly what I'm doing is making up to 20K/mo and he's using cloaking extensively, while my sales have been near dead. I am no longer doing PPC nor any other paid advertising.
Two good reasons for cloaking could be protecting one's best ranking content from thieves and competitors, and to present a better looking more polished page to the visitor. I would never want to deceive my visitors.
A lot of other people have recommended fantomaster, and cnet recommends it. If I do try it, I could experiment on one domain I'm not too worried about.
Generally, don't high quality sites have hundreds of pages? Can good well-written sales copy be considered good content?
My best site already has a Google PR of 5, and 2 new sites of mine already have a 4, so I do have a good start. The challenge now is figuring how to turn that good pagerank into targeted traffic.
I badly want to keep building link popularity but I'm having a very hard time finding many sites who are within my theme. I have pretty much exhausted the linkspartner database.
Fred
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chman0024
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 173
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Posted: 12/07/2003 11:43 am
Can you give us the site of this person using a cloaking program making 20/k a month
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/07/2003 11:59 am
http://www.wileyclark.com
http://www.firemathis.com
http://www.free-criminal-records.us
http://www.birthday-finder.us
There's a bunch more of them. Just move your mouse pointer immediately below the copywrite notice for invisible text links.
Fred
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Webmaster-Toolkit.com
Joined: Jul 18, 2002
# Posts: 1098
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Posted: 12/08/2003 02:57 am
I would also add my recommendation that you take a look at Fantomaster's services.
I have to say that Google in particular seems to be pretty lax at the moment with regards to cloaking. I'm seeing even simple UserAgent cloaking being employed with no penalties 
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/08/2003 06:11 am
I found out it's way beyond my tight budget. I got a bad case of sticker shock yesterday. It will have to wait until later when I can afford it.
"The fantomas shadowMaker(TM) will currently come for $1,560.... Only the annual renewal of the fantomas spiderSpy(TM) subscription which
comes for currently $199 (well, $224 by next year). Updates are free for
12 months, upgrades will come at a highly reduced price compared to the
regular rise."
If I ever do get into cloaking, I may have to settle for SellWide. Their product is $199, well within my budget. SellWide has a very good reputation.
Jack Humphrey of http://www.webmastertraffictools.com whom I talk to a lot, highly recommends against cloaking and said there are much better more legitimate ways to get lots of traffic. He recommended I take a look at http://www.rankingpower.com
Fred
[ Message was edited by: Webdetective 12/08/2003 06:23 am ]
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Webmaster-Toolkit.com
Joined: Jul 18, 2002
# Posts: 1098
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Posted: 12/08/2003 06:19 am
Webdetective can you edit out the affiliate tracking bit of that link please (the stuff after the ? ), as it's against our TOS to post affiliate links.
Thanks
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SmartROI
Joined: Nov 18, 2003
# Posts: 288
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Posted: 12/08/2003 12:43 pm
Ron C said: "The whole purpose of cloaking is to deceive someone. Unless you intend to deceive the visitors or the search engines or both, there is simply no reason to cloak."
That seems to be a very broad stroke you're painting. In fact I would think that the purpose of cloaking is not to deceive people, but rather to optimize the page for the particular search engine, situation, language, user, etc... Have you seen those sites that have tons of keywords written into the copy, the menus, and the footer of every page? You can be reading the page and you can't figure out what's going on because they've said a topic 10 different ways before you realized you needed to click on something. The SE's can really stink on obscure phrases. You tend to get homestead accounts and 404's instead of real content. Cloaking actually helps to provide more valuable content when it is done correctly. A cloaker can optimize a site for 1,000 phrases and direct each person that clicks to the appropriate landing page.
Cloaking is a cleaner and more efficient way of providing people with relevant results. Additionally you can focus your site on the usability and design required in order to make a sale. Once again, good cloaking software will allow a person to click on a link in a search engine and go to the exact page that helps them find the particular thing they were looking for.
TheJenn said: Any cloaking software has the potential to get you banned from Google and the other engines. If you wish to cloak, this is a risk that you must recognize and be willing to take.
If sneezing some how hurt Google's ability to sell Adwords, it would have the potential to get you banned. Have you ever noticed that SEO's that cloak just don't care? They simply buy a new domain for $5 or so, adjust their algorhythm, add a few links, and they're back to where they started in a few weeks or less. I've heard of some cloakers buying 10 domains per topic just to insure that they always have one waiting. They'll purposefully keep the keyword density set so that the site doesn't rank well until another one drops off, and then they simply tweak it up and they're back in.
I'm just presenting reality as I see it. After 8 or 9 years of being online, I've noticed a pattern. SE's cater to web developers until they get popular, then they start weaning off anything that will hinder their income. Typically they wean way too much and tick off web dev's quite a bit. Then someone else pops up, web devs find their new love, and the old one gets sold off to a company that doesn't know what they're doing and then they just get desperate and eventually die off or drag out with dismal results.
My 2 cents.
All in all, the SE's are looking out for #1... themselves.
They don't really care about the results, they don't really care about the ads, they don't really care about the quality of anything, unless it affects their bottom line. When you realize this, well you tend to have a different perspective. Anything less is just living in denial.
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/08/2003 01:03 pm
I'm just presenting reality as I see it. After 8 or 9 years of being online, I've noticed a pattern. SE's cater to web developers until they get popular, then they start weaning off anything that will hinder their income.
Maybe Google wants people to put Adsense banners on all their pages? The only problem there is they can "cheapen" a professional sales page and also distract visitors from clicking on the "Order Now!" button. That gives me an idea. I wonder if anybody who's cloaking, placed their Adsense banner codes on their cloaked pages, so that Googlebot will think they are displaying it on their "real" page the visitors are seeing. Of course if you ever got caught, the Grim Reeper would be paying your site a visit!
Fred
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SmartROI
Joined: Nov 18, 2003
# Posts: 288
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Posted: 12/08/2003 01:06 pm
Actually Google only wants Adsense to be on content pages. eCommerce sites, etc... are against their TOS.
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Ron C
Joined: Jul 23, 1999
# Posts: 1468
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Posted: 12/08/2003 06:48 pm
All in all, the SE's are looking out for #1... themselves.
That's true of everyone, SmartROI, from Saddam Hussein to Mother Theresa. Self-interest defines our entire world, and that ain't necessarily a bad thing. Read any Ayn Rand lately?
The question is whether self-interest should be driven by emotion or reason, whether it should be short-term gratification or long-term survival. Do you want to pig out on chocolate every day because it tastes so great? Or do you want to see the far side of fifty without a heart attack? Both desires are fueled by self-interest, but only one will likely be chosen by a rational person.
Profit can be maximized for the short-term, usually by ripping people off, or for the long-term, usually by providing enough value to insure the life-time profit from a customer exceeds the one-time profit. Yea, Google is looking out for number one. But they have a history of doing that rationally, by giving most searchers a reason to return again and again. Their business model demands that because, unlike many other models, they can't lock in the user or even build more than token loyalty. A search engine, any search engine, is only as good as its latest SERPs.
BTW, cloaking predates Google, let alone AdWords. It was also a bannable offense on every single search engine a long time before someone tried to use advertising as a scapegoat for why it was bannable. Sort of the same way the FCC takes a dim view on deceptive advertising?
Webdetective, while I don't encourage anyone to invest in cloaking technologies, I really don't encourage them to invest in cheap cloaking technology. The necessary script could be written in an hour, fine-tuned in a day, and would be absolutely useless by itself. Worse than useless, really, it would be dangerous. What you need, and what will cost you those big bucks, is a constantly updated database of which IP addresses are being used by the spiders. Without that, you'll find yourself serving a cloaked page to a spider on one request, then the uncloaked page to the SAME spider on a different IP address two minutes later. Examine your logs, to see how a spider crawls your site, and you'll immediately see what I mean. The script is cheap. Any database that makes the script actually work safely is going to cost you dearly.
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Webdetective
Joined: Dec 06, 2003
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 12/08/2003 07:58 pm
One good rationale for cloaking is sometimes a page that does well on the search engine does a poor job at selling the product or service. The visitor finds an otherwise ugly page at Google but gets instantly redirected to a page that's much better optimized for selling. There's nothing really deceptive about that, as long as the visitor's page is totally relevant to the cloaked page. It's really more cosmetics than anything.
Dmitry at SellWide said "our software know if it is a spider or not if it is a spider and the software have no it's ip in its database cloaker will add this ip" And "our software cant be detected - noone search engine havent detected it on any site using it"
Fred
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