What is cloaking?
Cloaking is showing search engines different content from what real visitors see, to trick rankings. It breaks Google's spam policies.
Cloaking is a deceptive practice where a website detects search engine crawlers and shows them one version of a page, while people see something else. For example, a page might show crawlers a keyword-rich article but show visitors an ad or an unrelated site. Hacked websites are sometimes cloaked without the owner knowing. Google treats cloaking as a serious spam violation.
Why it matters for your business: Never agree to tactics that show search engines something visitors cannot see. If Google flags cloaking on your site, it may be a sign the site was hacked.
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