Showing Different Content To Members & Non-Members/Google and Cloaking Risk
-
How do we safely show logged-in members/Google one type of content on a page and logged out/non-members another kind of content without getting slammed for cloaking?
Right now we do this thing where we show Google everything on the page, but new visitors partial forum comments with the pitch to sign up and see full comments. So far, we have not gotten into trouble for this.
The new idea is to show non-members a lot of marketing messages and one kind of navigation and then once they sign up and are logged in, show different or no marketing messages and a different kind of navigation.
How do we stay out of trouble with this? Where is the cloaking line drawn? It's got me kinda nervous.
Thanks... Darcy
-
Wow...I didn't know this! Thanks Dirk for putting me in the 5000 Moz points club!
-
Hi Marie
Couldn't resist to like this - I noticed that you were only missing one like to reach the Moz Walhalla...
Congrats,
Dirk
-
I agree with Dirk. This sounds like cloaking. It would be best to only show Google the content that non-members can see.
If you show Google content that a non-member can't see, then this is cloaking and could get you penalized. But, even if it doesn't get you penalized, it's possible it could get you into Panda trouble. Let's say I am searching for something and I see a Google result that shows me that your site has the answer to my query. I click on your site and realize that I can only see this content if I'm a member. I don't want to become a member, so I click away and find another site to read. If enough users do this, then this is a signal to Google (and likely to Panda) that readers don't like your site.
-
Hi Darcy,
If you apply the strict definition of Google, you are "inserting text or keywords into a page only when the User-agent requesting the page is a search engine, not a human visitor" - even if you don't do it with the intention to trick search engines (the inserted text = text which is invisible for non-registered users).
Is there a way to show the same content to both bots & humans, and still keeping the page
- attractive enough for search engines
- teasing enough for humans to register
It's difficult to guess the level of risk you're running - but once penalised, traffic drop is huge & recovery takes normally a long time (with no guarantee of full recovery)
rgds
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for the response. Folks out of Google do not see the full page that Google saw. They see a snippet of comments and a pitch to log in or register to see full comments (in a forum). They don't see different content right now... they see less content, but the same as Google saw. Is that clearer?
Thanks... Darcy
-
Hi Darcy,
When people click on the results in Google - do they see the normal page (the one that Googlebot saw) or the version for the "new" users. If it's the second case - you are indeed cloaking according to Google's definition (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355).
If you're listed in Google News - you could participate in "First Click Free" (https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en) - which basically allows you to hide your content behind a registration wall but still be indexed as long as you provide at least 5 pages (articles) /day
Not all participants to First Click Free are playing according to the rules (http://searchengineland.com/google-fails-enforce-first-click-free-203078) - but I guess your site isn't the Financial times.
You could continue what you're doing now, but you certainly run the risk of a penalty in my opinion
rgds,
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Impact & Google Impact On Removing Product From Category Page for Ecommerce Site
Hello Experts, For my Ecommerce site previously I was showing products at category pages i.e. first all subcategories name after that list all products of all subcateogries. That also approx per category 500 products via load more feature. My query is now I am planning to show products only at Product Listing Page and not on Category pages so what will be SEO impact and how google will treat this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johny123450 -
Duplicate content across different domains
Hi Guys, Looking for some advice regarding duplicate content across different domains. I have reviewed some previous Q&A on this topic e.g. https://moz.com/community/q/two-different-domains-exact-same-content but just want to confirm if I'm missing anything. Basically, we have a client which has 1 site (call this site A) which has solids rankings. They have decided to build a new site (site B), which contains 50% duplicate pages and content from site A. Our recommendation to them was to make the content on site B as unique as possible but they want to launch asap, so not enough time. They will eventually transfer over to unique content on the website but in the short-term, it will be duplicate content. John Mueller from Google has said several times that there is no duplicate content penalty. So assuming this is correct site A should be fine, no ranking losses. Any disagree with this? Assuming we don't want to leave this to chance or assume John Mueller is correct would the next best thing to do is setup rel canonical tags between site A and site B on the pages with duplicate content? Then once we have unique content ready, execute that content on the site and remove the canonical tags. Any suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated! Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Https & http urls in Google Index
Hi everyone, this question is a two parter: I am now working for a large website - over 500k monthly organic traffic. The site currently has both http and https urls in Google's index. The website has not formally converted to https. The https began with an error and has evolved unchecked over time. Both versions of the site (http & https) are registered in webmaster tools so I can clearly track and see that as time passes http indexation is decreasing and https has been increasing. The ratio is at about 3:1 in favor of https at this time. Traffic over the last year has slowly dipped, however, over the last two months there has been a steady decline in overall visits registered through analytics. No single page appears to be the culprit, this decline is occurring across most pages of the website, pages which traditionally draw heavy traffic - including the home page. Considering that Google is giving priority to https pages, could it be possible that the split is having a negative impact on traffic as rankings sway? Additionally, mobile activity for the site has steadily increased both from a traffic and a conversion standpoint. However that traffic has also dipped significantly over the last two months. Looking at Google's mobile usability error's page I see a significant number of errors (over 1k). I know Google has been testing and changing mobile ranking factors, is it safe to posit that this could be having an impact on mobile traffic? The traffic declines are 9-10% MOM. Thank you. ~Geo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Geosem0 -
Google displaying a content box above the listing link for top ranking listing in SERPs
Hi, In the attached Google SERP example the first listing below the paid search ads has a large box with a snippet of content from the relevant page then followed by the standard link. Does anyone know how you get Google to display a box like this in their SERPs? I checked the code on the page and there doesn't appear to be anything special about it such as any schema markup. It uses standard list code. Does this only appear for particular types of content or sites, such as medical content in this case? Is the content more likely to appear for lists? Does it only appear for high authority sites that Google has selected? We have a similar medical information based site and it would be great to try to get Google to display a similar box of content for some of our pages. Thanks. Damien ZmPJVSl.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | james.harris0 -
Using both dofollow & nofollow links within the same blog site (but different post).
Hi all, I have been actively pursuing bloggers for my site in order to build page rank. My website sells women undergarments that are more on the exotic end. I noticed a large amount of prospective bloggers demand product samples. As already confirm, bloggers that are given "free" samples should use a rel=no follow attribute in their links. Unfortunately this does not build my page rank or transfer links juice. My question is this: is it advisable for them to also blog additional posts and include dofollow links? The idea is for the blogger to use a nofollow when posting about the sample and a regular link for a secondary post at a later time. What are you thoughts concerning this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Google Places & Multiple Listings
Our client used to have a listing in each city, but after updating the addresses they were forever under review. Google said that businesses serving customers at their locations can only list their primary office. Back when this client had multiple city listings, all addresses but one were UPS boxes. If they are to change back to "No, all customers come to the business location," can they once again submit a listing for each city using these addresses? Yes, I realize they are UPS boxes, but they insist on being listed for each city.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elcrazyhorse0 -
Magento Hidden Products & Google Not Found Errors
We recently moved our website over to the Magento eCommerce platform. Magento has functionality to make certain items not visible individually so you can, for example, take 6 products and turn it into 1 product where a customer can choose their options. You then hide all the individual products, leaving only that one product visible on the site and reducing duplicate content issues. We did this. It works great and the individual products don't show up in our site map, which is what we'd like. However, Google Webmaster Tools has all of these individual product URLs in its Not Found Crawl Errors. ! For example: White t-shirt URL: /white-t-shirt Red t-shirt URL: /red-t-shirt Blue t-shirt URL: /blue-t-shirt All of those are not visible on the site and the URLs do not appear in our site map. But they are all showing up in Google Webmaster Tools. Configurable t-shirt URL: /t-shirt This product is the only one visible on the site, does appear on the site map, and shows up in Google Webmaster Tools as a valid URL. ! Do you know how it found the individual products if it isn't in the site map and they aren't visible on the website? And how important do you think it is that we fix all of these hundreds of Not Found errors to point to the single visible product on the site? I would think it is fairly important, but don't want to spend a week of man power on it if the returns would be minimal. Thanks so much for any input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing.SCG0 -
Forwarding Empty URLs to Homepage for SEO & Old Backlink Salvaging - Is there any value or risk?
Our company owns about 30 URLs that we aren't currently using. Is there any SEO value to be gained by forwarding these content-less URLs to our homepage if they aren't currently indexed by google? Some of these sites were previously in use at low traffic volumes by companies who licensed use of our brand and URL. After parting ways a year or longer in the past, no 301 redirection was done to save the link juice, so it's long gone at this point. However, there may be some sites on the net that are still linking to various pages on the URL. What would be the best course of action to salvage any value of these URLs until they are in use again as full websites? Insights would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayline0