Ok cupcake, I was asked a question about cloaking (otherwise known as IP delivery), so here goes…

Cloaking has been around ever since people realized that the search engines could be easily manipulated.

The basic way this works is that the search engines see a highly optimized page while the visitor see a page you’ve selected for them. For example, my blog isn’t ‘optimized’. I just post content and let the chips fall where they may. But what if I wanted to ‘optimize’ for the term 'Make Money'? The easiest thing to do is create another site focused on the theme of ‘Make Money’ and redirect all visitors (via IP Delivery) to my blog. Got it? Good, let’s move on…

This began in 1995 (as far as I can tell) with adult webmasters using every keyword imaginable to drive traffic to their sites. This abuse is what caused the search engines to frown upon this growing industry. This was the very first traffic system I personally used in 1998.

In 1998, you began hearing the terms 'black hat' and 'white hat'. This began the distinction between what people thought was ethical and not. Even though search engines were algorithm driven, the acts themselves were labeled by communities.

Cloaking went underground and was still very effective. The 'cloakers' infiltrated the 'white hat' communities and began a disinformation campaign (I was part of it) in order to keep fewer and fewer people from using this highly effective traffic technique.

Things remained quiet until 2004 when several cloaking apps became mainstream as people realized how effective they were and began flapping their jaws telling others. These included Search Engine Cloaker, Kloak-it, IP Deliver, Cloaking Master, and Fantomaster.

In 2006, the industry took a big hit as Google implemented a new filter and essentially wiped out 90% of all cloaked sites.

Those that remained were from those that truly understood the game.

So here are my hard and fast rules for cloaking:

1. Keep the sites themed and small (all cloaking apps). Basically, keep them focused.
2. Make the content unique (this is a big advantage of Kloak It).
2. Host on various servers.
3. Get a crap load of links to these sites (blog commenting is good for this).
4. Expect them to remain indexed for 3-6 months.
5. Realize this is just traffic… concentrate on making money.
6. Mass deployment (Fantomaster and Cloaking Master).

The costs to play this game are high… domains, hosting, software. It all has to be occasionally recycled as domains are banned.

But, if you have the staff that's paid less than what you make from the traffic, then go for it.

Woody