HTML Coding:

Many of the times there is more HTML code as compared to the text. This again does not suit search engine optimization. There has to be substantial amount of text and lesser HTML coding. In this case rather than recoding the entire websites, they found cloaking as the best option.

Now you know why, it's time to find out how. A cloaking is done by modifying a file called .htaccess. Apache server has a module called "mod_rewrite". With the help of this module in .htaccess file you can apply a cloaking technique for your web pages.

Webmasters gather search engines' IP addresses (231.258.476.13) or User-Agents (Googlebot). If mod_rewrite module detects that an IP address or user-agent belongs to a search engine, it delivers a web page that is especially designed for SEs. If IP doesn't belong to any spider, than it thinks it's a regular visitor and delivers a normal web page.

There are 5 types of cloaking:

• User Agent Cloaking (UA Cloaking)
  
• IP Agent Cloaking (IP Cloaking)
  
• IP and User Agent Cloaking (IPUA Cloaking).
  
• Referral based Cloaking.
  
• Session based Cloaking.
  

All five have unique applications and purposes, yet all 5 can fit nicely within one program.

• User Agent cloaking is good for taking care of specific agents. Wap, Wml pages for the cell phone crowd. Active X for the IE crowd.
  Quality css from the Moz and Opera crowd.
  Nice black screen for the web tv'ers.
  Specialty content for agents (eg: NoSmartTags, GoogleBot Noarchive)
  No sense in sending out stuff with js, java, or flash than a user can't actually run.
  
• IP Address Cloaking is good for taking care of demographic groups. Language file generation for various countries.
  Advertising delivery based on geo data.
  Pages built for broad band users.
  Low impact pages for overseas users.
  User-time-of-day determination and custom content based on tod geo data (news, sports weather...etc)
  Specifically targeting demo groups such as AOL, Mindspring etal.

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