Decloaking Hazards - Why You Should Shun Caching Search Engines

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While all search engines use one form of caching ...
to build their indices, some of them make apoint of ... cached web pages to their ...
commonly quoted pretext for this is that i While all search engines use one form of caching oranother to build their indices, some of them make apoint of displaying cached web pages to their users.The commonly quoted pretext for this is that it offerssearchers fast access to a page's content, making iteasier to check out whether it's what they are reallylooking for in the first place. Of course, what thisactually does is keep visitors on the search engine'ssite, making them more susceptible to banner ads andother means of promotion.However, the drawbacks this entails are numerous.- Depending on the search engine's index cycle thecontent presented may be quite outdated.- More often than not, the presented pages will not befully functional: = relative (internal) links tend to get broken = JavaScript and external Java applets won't work anymore = site design and layout may be massacred by incorrect or non-existent display of external Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) = banner ads may not be displayed properly, thus depriving webmasters of revenue = dynamic content may not be rendered the way it was originally set up.- Displaying content within an alien context (e.g.under the search engine's header, encased in a frame,etc.) beyond the control of said content'sgenerators/authors, arguably constitutes a blatantinfringement of intellectual property and copyrights.Moreover, for a web site employing IP delivery, thispractice constitutes a prime Decloaking Hazard: ascloaking works by feeding an optimized (or, at least,different) page to search engine spiders not intendedfor human perusal, caching such pages and displayingthem for the asking will reveal your cloaking effort,this rendering it useless - any unscrupulous competitorcould easily steal your cloaked code to optimize theirown pages with it and achieve better rankings to yourdetriment.The most prominent search engine displaying cached webpages not of their own making is, of course, Google.
Inthe past Google staff would promptly comply with anyrequest by webmasters not to display cached pages.Then, about a year and some ago, Google introduced aproprietary meta tag (META NAME="GOOGLEBOT"CONTENT="NOARCHIVE") for webmasters to include in theheader of those pages they want to see excluded fromthis feature.The Google meta tag actually works. While there wassome indication immediately after their introductionthat sites opting for this exclusion might be penalizedranking wise, this seems to have abated.
Obviously,should Google really start a witch hunt on cloakingsites, as their public announcements are font ofstating every other month or so, it only stands toreason that web sites making use of this special metatag might constitute prime targets. For this reason wedo not recommend cloaking for Google unless you do itexclusively from a dedicated shadow domain.Another company, Germany based brainbot technologies AGoffers search engine technology for portals:Brainbot robots are also spidering international domains:#UA gigabaz/3.14 ([email protected]; http://gigabaz.com/gigabaz/)mail.brainbot.com134.93.7.97#UA gigaBazV11.3 bazbrainbot.com; http://brainbot.com/gigabaz/151.189.96.99One licensee making use of their cached results is geekbot:On their result pages you will find a "scan" function -this will display cached pages, albeit in a differentformat.French search engine AntiSearch offers display ofcached web pages, too:AntiSearch operates the following spiders:#UA antibot-V1.1/i586-linux-2.262.210.155.49#UA antibot-V1.1/i586-linux-2.262.210.155.50#UA antibot-V1.1/i586-linux-2.262.210.155.56#UA antibot-V1.1/i586-linux-2.262.210.155.58#UA antibot-V1.1/i586-linux-2.262.210.155.59Finally, let's not forget German search engineSpeedfind:Speedfind, too, offers display of cached pages.Due to the peculiar legal situation in Germany, whichmakes webmaster fully liable for links to third partypages unless they post an explicit disclaimerprominently on their site, Speedfind refuses allliability for the pages thus displayed:"SPEEDFIND DOCUMENT FROM CACHE VIEWERSPEEDFIND is in no way liable for content displayedbelow.All rights belong to the respective page's author.We are only displaying a copy of said page."(Translated from German)So while they do acknowledge authors' full rights, sameauthors' permission for display of copyrighted contentis never requested - there is no indication in theirterms of submission how to prevent page caching.Speedfind operates the following spiders:#UA visual ramBot xtreme 7.0proxy-gate.oberland.net192.109.251.26#UA speedfind ramBot xtreme 8.1new.speedfind.de194.97.8.162#UA speedfind ramBot xtreme 8.1eins.speedfind.de194.97.8.163#UA visual ramBot xtreme 7.0c2.oberland.net194.221.132.56#UA visual ramBot xtreme 7.0io.oberland.net194.221.132.139Rather than bother with minor players like Speedfind,AntiSearch and brainbot by excluding them from yoursubmission process, you may want to consider blockingtheir spiders from access to your web site altogether(lest your competitors should submit your site behindyour back!).In this case, we would recommend using ourfantomas multiBlocker(TM) for a professional blockersolution: Article Tags: Visual Rambot Xtreme, Search Engines, Search Engine, Visual Rambot, Rambot Xtreme Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .