undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. 301 Redirect & Cloaking

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

301 Redirect & Cloaking

Technical SEO
5
7
3.7k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • Artience
    Artience last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 10:24 AM

    HEllo~~~~ People.

    I have a question regarding on cloaking.

    I will be really greatful if you can help me with question.

    I have a site www.example.com and it is targeting for multi countries.

    So I use sub directories for targeting multi countries.

    e.g. www.example.com/us/

    www.example.com/de/

    www.example.com/hk/ ....... so on and on.

    Therefore, when people type www.example.com, I use IP delivery to send users to each coutries.

    Here is my question.

    I use 301 redirect for IP delivery, which means when user enter www.example.com,

    my site read user's IP and send them to right country site by 301 redirect.

    In this case, is there any possibility that Google considers it as cloaking?

    Please people.... share me some ideas and thoughs.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • RyanKent
      RyanKent @Artience last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 12:10 PM Jul 15, 2011, 11:56 AM

      Artience Girl, the information shared by Shane, Aaron and Lewis is correct.

      Google wants to see the same page as it would be shown to a user under the same circumstances. If Google is crawling your page from San Jose California, then they want to see what a user from San Jose would see. If they decide to later crawl your site from their center in London, they want to see your site as it would be seen by a London user. The geo-targeting redirects you are presently doing are fine.

      If you were to write any code which says to always show the Google crawler the US version of your site, then that tactic would be defined as cloaking. Any time you write code to specifically identify a crawler and show it different content, then you are cloaking.

      It seems you are a bit uncomfortable with the answers so let me set you at ease by sharing a Matt Cutts response to your question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFf1gwr6HJw

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • Artience
        Artience @Jinx14678 last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 11:26 AM Jul 15, 2011, 11:26 AM

        Hi Shane Thomas.

        Thanks for your feedback.

        Actually contents is not exactly same, but alot similar. Because I sell different products for different countries.

        For example, I sell 30 products for US but only 10 products for UK. In this case, my UK site has only pages for 10 products. Of course, contents lay out and products are similar.

        In this case, should I worry about cloaking?

        Also, how search engine can see "intent is not deceptive or not"?

        I always wondering about that. ^^

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Artience
          Artience @CPU last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 11:19 AM Jul 15, 2011, 11:19 AM

          Hello, Lewis-SEO. Thanks for your reply, but I am not totally following your answer.

          What do you mean by "Google only version of the site"?

          You mentioned as follow.

          "You will therefore need to decide which regional variation you want Google to end up at when it tries to visit/crawl the www.example.com URL"

          Is this meaning that I should set "user agent redirection" for Google bot to send it to particular regional site? e.g. send Google bot to only www.example.com/us/ no matter which country IP address Google bot has?

          Please correct me, if I am wrong. But this sounds more cloacking to me.

          Google bot with DE IP address should redirect to www.example.com/de/ so google bot can crawl right contents. And when Google bot with UK IP addres should redirect to www.example.com/uk/.

          I think if I send alll Google bot to www.example.com/us/ for example, it will confuse google bot more.

          Could you please be more specific regarding your answer? PLEASE ~~~

          RyanKent 1 Reply Last reply Jul 15, 2011, 11:56 AM Reply Quote 0
          • CPU
            CPU last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 10:53 AM Jul 15, 2011, 10:53 AM

            Hi Artience Girl

            The Google Webmaster guidelines covers topics like these but a key point is that geotargetting using IP address is fine as long as you are not showing Google a separate Google only version of the site. This would be considered cloaking.

            You will therefore need to decide which regional variation you want Google to end up at when it tries to visit/crawl the www.example.com URL

            But before you do that check the Google Webmaster guidelines in and around this area as if you follow them you are less likely to end up on the wrong side of them.

            Hope this helps.

            Artience 1 Reply Last reply Jul 15, 2011, 11:19 AM Reply Quote 0
            • Jinx14678
              Jinx14678 last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 10:49 AM Jul 15, 2011, 10:43 AM

              This really does not fit the description of cloaking, the content is the same, just different languages right?

              If this is the case IMO this would not bee seen as cloaking as your are not delivering different content, just user experience.

              Also as long as you are not separating IP delivery by source (meaning sending spiders somewhere different than humans) this would not be the definition of cloaking.

              WIKI:

              One use of IP delivery is to determine the requestor's location, and deliver content specifically written for that country. This isn't necessarily cloaking. For instance, Google uses IP delivery for AdWords and AdSense advertising programs to target users in different geographic locations.

              As of 2006, many sites have taken up IP delivery to personalise content for their regular customers. Many of the top 1000 sites, including sites like Amazon (amazon.com), actively use IP delivery. None of these have been banned from search engines **as their intent is not deceptive.  **    Keyword here..... Deceptive  🙂

              Artience 1 Reply Last reply Jul 15, 2011, 11:26 AM Reply Quote 2
              • AaronSchinke
                AaronSchinke last edited by Jul 15, 2011, 10:34 AM Jul 15, 2011, 10:34 AM

                I don't think this would come across as cloaking at all. It's a fairly common practice.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • moz46y

                  Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword

                  301 redirect 301 redirects

                  I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards

                  Technical SEO | Jan 23, 2024, 5:39 PM | moz46y
                  0
                • LindsayE

                  What to do with old content after 301 redirect

                  I'm going through all our blog and FAQ pages to see which ones are performing well and which ones are competing with one another. Basically doing an SEO content clean up. Is there any SEO benefit to keeping the page published vs trashing it after you apply a 301 redirect to a better performing page?

                  Technical SEO | Dec 8, 2017, 11:20 AM | LindsayE
                  0
                • ulefos

                  Remove html file extension and 301 redirects

                  Hi Recently I ask for some work done on my website from a company,  but I am not sure what they've done is right.
                  What I wanted was html file extensions to be removed like
                  /ash-logs.html to /ash-logs
                  also the index.html to www.timports.co.uk
                  I have done a crawl diagnostics and have duplicate page content and 32 page title duplicates. This is so doing my head in please help This is what is in the .htaccess file <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed on
                  ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache,combine_css, collapse_whitespace,move_css_to_head, remove_comments</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.html RewriteEngine On 
                   # Rewrite valid requests on .html files  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html?rw=1 [L,QSA] 
                   # Return 404 on direct requests against .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .html$  
                  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !rw=1 [NC]
                   RewriteRule ^ - [R=404] AddCharset UTF-8 .html # <filesmatch “.(js|css|html|htm|php|xml|swf|flv|ashx)$”="">#SetOutputFilter DEFLATE #</filesmatch> <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
                  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 years"
                  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 years"</ifmodule> <files 403.shtml="">order allow,deny allow from all</files> redirect 301 /PRODUCTS http://www.timports.co.uk/kiln-dried-logs
                  redirect 301 /kindling_firewood.html http://www.timports.co.uk/kindling-firewood.html
                  redirect 301 /about_us.html http://www.timports.co.uk/about-us.html
                  redirect 301 /log_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/log-delivery.html redirect 301 /oak_boards_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/oak-boards-delivery.html
                  redirect 301 /un_edged_oak_boards.html http://www.timports.co.uk/un-edged-oak-boards.html
                  redirect 301 /wholesale_logs.html http://www.timports.co.uk/wholesale-logs.html redirect 301 /privacy_policy.html http://www.timports.co.uk/privacy-policy.html redirect 301 /payment_failed.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-failed.html redirect 301 /payment_info.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-info.html

                  Technical SEO | Apr 11, 2013, 10:03 AM | ulefos
                  1
                • Dan-Lawrence

                  Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?

                  If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?

                  Technical SEO | Nov 5, 2012, 1:05 PM | Dan-Lawrence
                  0
                • bewoldt

                  How to create a delayed 301 redirect that still passes juice?

                  My company is merging one of our sites into another site. At first I was just going to create a 301 redirect from domainA.com to domainB.com but we decided that would be too confusing for customers expecting to see domainA.com so we want to create a page that says something like "We've moved. please visit domainB.com or be redirected after 10 seconds". My question is, how do I create a redirect that has a delay and will this still pass the same amount of juice that a regular 301 redirect would? I've heard that meta refreshes are considered spammy by Google.

                  Technical SEO | Jun 10, 2012, 6:04 PM | bewoldt
                  0
                • Squall315

                  Will bad things happen if I cancel 301 site redirect?

                  Hi, please someone help! We have two identical websites, say A & B. Because of the not so good SEO establishment, site B was built and site A was 301 redirected to site B weeks ago. For some reasons, we have to reuse site A, which means we have to cancel the 301 redirection. (Sound a little crazy) So the question are: 1. Can we conduct the action? 2. If we cant, what's the reason? 3. If we can, what would be the best practice? Thanks for help in advance! Plus: we also CARE what would happen to site B if the 301 is cancelled? Will it grow healthy like a new site?

                  Technical SEO | Apr 25, 2012, 10:28 PM | Squall315
                  0
                • dballari

                  Where does Wordpress store the 301 redirects?

                  Hi, I've just created a campaign for my new wordpress blog and found 11 301 redirects which I was not aware of. It looks like wordpress has created them automatically. Does any one know how wordpress handles this issues or where are they stored so I can delete them? They are of no use for me. 9 of these redirects point to the same url with an added '/' and are in pages 1 is on a post. I've been changing the permalink and some urls several times and maybe one of these times the Wordpress has automatically created the 301 redirect. But why? I do not want to keep the old url. the last redirect is very strange it goes from http://www.mydomain.com/folder to http://www.mydomain.com where folder is the folder where I installed wordpress. But again, I want no one to type the url with the folder name or even know this folder exists. Any comment on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot, David

                  Technical SEO | Apr 11, 2012, 8:30 AM | dballari
                  0
                • EvergladesDirect

                  200 Redirects for SEO instead of 301

                  We are working with a company on re-platforming our website.  On a call yesterday they outlined a strategy to use 200 redirects for our top keywords instead of 301s.  I am not familiar with this type of redirect and was wondering if anyone could provide some more insight.

                  Technical SEO | Jun 1, 2011, 3:20 PM | EvergladesDirect
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.