Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of showing different content to search engines than to human visitors. Common implementations serve keyword-stuffed HTML to crawlers while presenting normal pages to users via JavaScript, CSS, or IP-based detection. Cloaking is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can lead to removal from search results.

Why it matters: Avoid cloaking entirely. If you need to serve different content for legitimate reasons — such as JavaScript-rendered pages — ensure the HTML received by crawlers represents the same content and meaning that users experience. Google's guidelines are explicit: any practice that serves different content with the intent to manipulate rankings is considered deceptive.