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Unison.ie Cloaking – Will They Be Banned From Google?
A nice little find by Niall Donegan who discusses Unison.ie cloaking:
A prime example of this is Unison.ie. When searching for current Irish news it usually ranks fairly high on Google, however all the pages require you register first before you view them. The registration gives no advantage to people like me who just want to a quick look at the latest news. I suspect that I’m not alone and that lots of people will just go back and look for another site.
Unison’s simple user agent checking makes it very easy to get in unmolested though. The User Agent Switcher Plugin for Firefox allows you to easily set exactly what user agent you want your browser to appear as. The GoogleBot isn’t in the list of Useragents available, but it is easily added. Switch to GoogleBot as your useragent, and magically you will have full access to the Unison site.
Now I always knew that they ran a subscription wall on the site, but I hadn’t realised that they were picked up by Google news. There’s been a huge amount of interest in media sites cloaking recently (see here for more). My feeling is that Unison would want to clean this up pretty quick or risk having a lot of egg on their face. As Niall mentions:
I know that Unison will probably close this hole within a few days
Could take quite a bit of work to change the way they present their pages. I suppose they could just set their cloaking routine to let everyone through. But will they?
Nice find Niall.
Richard,
It’s amazing what you can find out when motivated by annoyance.
Niall.
Comment by Niall — March 23, 2007 @ 11:06 am
Well, webmasterworld was doing this for years. Google clearly knew about it. A few weeks back when someone dragged it up, it seems like WMW have made some slight changes.
The New York Times also does this. I believe Google are a bit lax when it comes to certain content.
Comment by Dave Davis — March 23, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
Hi Dave
It’s a very touchy subject these days though. Not so sure that Google are still so lax, given all the flak they’ve taken of late.
Comment by Richard Hearne — March 23, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
good writeup. double standards. grr.
Comment by 3rigena — March 27, 2007 @ 1:33 am
I think Unison will have to think long and hard about fixing the hole. Like you said it would take a lot of work to fix, but they would also be either making the whole site open or cutting off the Google bot from the complete stories. And then cutting off from Google News. I don’t mean completely but enough that they will loose money or presence.
Comment by David Rooney — March 28, 2007 @ 10:59 pm
They could simply do a NYT on it and make the content freely available for 5 days. After that place it behind the sub wall.
They’ve started using Adsense to monetise the traffic also. Interesting.
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — March 29, 2007 @ 7:36 am
[...] They also give a run down on other things to avoid… * Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. * Don’t send automated queries to Google. * Don’t load pages with irrelevant words. * Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. * Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware. * Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. * If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first. [...]
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[...] They also give a run down on other things to avoid… * Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. * Don’t send automated queries to Google. * Don’t load pages with irrelevant words. * Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. * Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware. * Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. * If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first. [...]
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[...] this update and in true Richard Hearne style (see Unison & Continuum) I’m going to ‘out’ someone for not playing by the rules. The [...]
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