Cloaking / SEO Terms Cloaking Cloaking is an unethical search engine optimisation (SEO) technique in which different content is shown to search engine crawlers than what is displayed to human visitors. The goal of cloaking is to manipulate search rankings by presenting highly optimised or keyword-stuffed content to search engines, while delivering unrelated or less relevant material to users. This deceptive practice violates search engine guidelines and can lead to penalties or removal from search results. Cloaking is typically implemented through server-side scripts, user-agent detection or IP address filtering. For example, a website may show a search engine a page full of keywords related to travel deals but redirect human users to a page promoting an unrelated product or service. Other cloaking variations include displaying HTML text to bots while showing an image-only version to users, or using JavaScript to hide visible elements from crawlers. Although some site configurations may unintentionally resemble cloaking, search engines evaluate intent and consistency when assessing violations. Search engines like Google and Bing consider cloaking a serious breach of trust and transparency. If detected, a site may lose its rankings or be removed entirely from the index. Ethical SEO practices focus on creating content that is both valuable to users and accessible to search engines. This includes using proper tags, structured data and responsive design to improve visibility without resorting to manipulation. Understanding the risks of cloaking is important for web developers, marketers and content teams to avoid accidental missteps and maintain a strong, sustainable search presence.