Cloaking

Cloaking is an HTML trick with the following goal: to present a page in a way that is particularly interesting for users and at the same time optimal for search engines. Although this contradicts Google's philosophy, content optimized for search engines and content optimized for users often conflict. For example, videos and media are more interesting for users, while search enginesBots can process text content better. Cloaking is therefore an attempt to present different content to users and search engines using HTML or other techniques.

Google considers cloaking a violation of its guidelines. The consequence can be a manual action, and in the worst case, the domain disappears from the index. The supposed benefit is out of all proportion to the risk.

The honest way relies on content that works for both sides: videos with transcripts, images with Alt text and text that remains understandable even without media. This makes the trick unnecessary.

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