Yahoo! Caught Cloaking. Will They Ban Themselves?
I was doing some research to prepare for another post, but to my surprise I found something even juicier. Yahoo! is cloaking their (fixed typo for the professor) Autos pages, serving keyword stuffed pages to the SE crawlers and regular pages to the average users. I was browsing as Yahoo!’s Slurp crawler and therefore was able to see this.
Below are two screenshots. The first thumbnail on the left is what you will see on this page, http://autos.yahoo.com/used-cars/forsale.html, if you are crawling as Slurp. The second thumbnail on the right is what you will see on the same page if you are surfing as a normal user.
So, they are clearly serving different content to their users and to the search engines. The pages they’re serving to the bots are heavily keyword stuffed. I honestly don’t know where they could cram the word “used cars” on the page again. It’s everywhere.
If you look on Yahoo!’s “Search Content Quality Guidelines” it states:
What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want include:
- Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
- Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
- Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
- Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
- Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
- Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
- The use of text that is hidden from the user
- Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
- Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity
- Pages built primarily for the search engines
- Misuse of competitor names
- Multiple sites offering the same content
- Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
- Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience
I’d say the page in question above falls into all of those items I highlighted above. Yahoo! is repeating the keyword “used cars” over and over to inflate their search engine rankings. The text is hidden from the user. It is giving the search engines different content than what the end-user sees. And lastly, this page is built primarily for the search engines.
Normally, I could care less if someone is spamming or using shady techniques. You do what you have to do to rank, and as long as you don’t take a shot at me, all the power to ya. I don’t believe in spam reports and I don’t believe in snitching on competitors. BUT, I don’t feel that this applies to the search engines. They are the ones placing the “quality guidelines”, penalizing websites, banning websites, and trying to enforce the rules that they’ve made up. And they penalize and ban websites for less than what Yahoo! is doing above. How is that fair? With one hand you’re going to ban a site and in effect reduce their revenue and with your other hand you employ the same strategies (or worse)? Come on now.
May 21, 2007
[...] ist von agerhart.com beim Cloaking erwischt worden. Man cloakt nicht nur gegenüber dem eigenem Robot [...]
May 21, 2007
[...] Original blog post here [...]
May 21, 2007
Nice …
Guess when you have the power you need to abuse it …
May 21, 2007
If they ban themselves, I wonder if the world would implode and the space time continuum would shred at 88mph.
May 21, 2007
Nice! How should I understand the quality guidlines of search engines as a normal webmaster if they don´t understand themselves?
May 21, 2007
Nice find…I’m wondering if there are other sections of the Yahoo! site that is cloaking, I’m sure that if they’re doing this in one section of the site they certainly would be doing it in other places?
May 21, 2007
I did a few spot checks on other sections but couldn’t find much
May 21, 2007
I’m sure it’s obviously a programming error.
May 21, 2007
On the brighter side of things, how much more can thier marketshare possibly diminsh
May 21, 2007
How bizarre! Well spotted. I wonder if G will ban Y!
May 21, 2007
[...] Yahoo! Caught Cloaking. Will They Ban Themselves? [agerhart.com - via Threadwatch] [...]
May 21, 2007
[...] Warum auch nicht, wenn man bei Google und für seinen eigenen Bot “Slurp” besser stehen will. Gefunden bei Jojo, das Orginal gibts bei agerhard.com. [...]
May 22, 2007
This is crazy!@#$!@
If yahoo doesn’t fix this, they are basically telling everyone to feed slurp spam.
May 22, 2007
[...] I saw some news on Threadwatch that pointed to a site that exposed some of Yahoo’s search engine cloaking. [...]
May 22, 2007
Interesting, the results are now the same…and guess which version Yahoo chose to use?
They must be feeling the pinch from lack of users on their site. It makes me wonder how many SEO’s for corporate websites are spammers?
Both the main page and Google cache are the same, they mention “used cars’ over 50x. Way to go Yahoo for showing us good usability and proper semantics.
NOT!
May 22, 2007
[...] wird. Ja, auch ich greife die aktuelle Diskussion auf, dass Yahoo seine Ergebnisse cloakt. Agerhart hats bemerkt und gleich ging, zu recht, ein Raunen durch die [...]
May 22, 2007
[...] al dunque, da quanto leggo su Agehart.com, la sezione di Yahoo! in cui veniva utilizzato il cloaking è quella relativa alle automobili usate [...]
May 22, 2007
[...] is something that search engines frown upon and even ban you for. Yahoo, according to a blog, has actually been caught [...]
May 22, 2007
This should really piss off people who are working hard to stay within the rules but end up outside of the TOS of Yahoo and get banned. Especially since Yahoo wouldn’t have changed a thing if this article didn’t end up on threadwatch. SEO pros all know where we can push the envelope, sure, but outright spamming by an SE that would ban you for the same practice is ridiculous.
May 22, 2007
My guess is that they have more to lose from being banned from Google than themselves! I would like to hear their position on this situation, but I bet the fix will be made without a peep from Yahoo!.
May 22, 2007
[...] Yahoo! ist laut einem Posting auf Internetmarketing News, welcher sich auf einen Blogeintrag beim agerhart Blog bezieht, beim Cloaking erwischt [...]
May 22, 2007
[...] hat die Yahoo-Jungs dabei erwischt. Screenshots dazu gibt es ebenfalls auf seiner [...]
May 22, 2007
I guess it’s “Hate the player… Don’t hate the game…” when it comes to Yahoo!.
May 22, 2007
[...] http://www.agerhart.com/seo-rankings/yahoo-caught-cloaking-will-they-ban-themselves/ [...]
May 22, 2007
[...] Agerheart is reporting some interesting findings. “they are clearly serving different content … [...]
May 22, 2007
Come on SEO Pirate….do you really consider Yahoo to be just another SEO competitor?
If they’re going to set vague rules that they can use to penalize and ban webmasters don’t you think that they should also follow them?
May 22, 2007
[...] Yahoo cloaked - aber schlecht… [...]
May 22, 2007
how do you use slurp? How can I use it myself?
May 22, 2007
Niko,
You can use this plugin in Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59
May 23, 2007
wow with this and the whole flickr issue, these guys sure are having their name smeared justifiably.
May 23, 2007
Who has the time to find this shit anyways?
Why don’t you use your talents to find pedophiles and terrorists and direct the police to them.
Now I’m sure Yahoo! is really sweating over this blog right now.
May 23, 2007
What a dumbass thing to say Rahoorkhuit.
I’m not in the law enforcement or military field so no, in my spare or employment hours I’m not scouring for pedohiles and terrorists. Since I work in the SEO field I look for….gasp…wait for it….things relating to SEO. I know, its madness.
How many have you found today anyway?
May 23, 2007
They are sweating enough to already have fixed it and openly admitted to making the mistake….
May 23, 2007
Good point Brent!
May 23, 2007
Yawn. Much more interesting was that agerhart can’t spell “its”.
May 23, 2007
Yep, there’s a typo. Sue me.
May 23, 2007
[...] mind after Yahoo! was discovered to have been using cloaking on their autos site. Agerhart.com provided screenshots of what looked like a page filled with the key word “used cars” [...]
May 23, 2007
Rahoorkhuit, you may not know who Andrew is. He is the Director of SEO for a multi-million dollar online Automotive company. So checking out SEO tactics on Yahoo Autos falls DIRECTLY under his jurisdiction. What is more intriguing is that you found this story, came to his site, and had the time to post when you should have been looking for pedophiles.
I don’t think it is off base to call Yahoo out on this type of activity. It isn’t just the fact that they are using keyword stuffing (apparently they don’t need to “fix” this part) and cloaking, but more importantly the fact that they have helped to create the standards of proper optimization on the Internet, then violated those guidelines. There are lots of sites that use these black-hat tactics but those sites didn’t create the rules. We expect more from Yahoo.
To be fair, Tim Mayer didn’t set out to “game their own system”; at least I hope not. He was likely just as surprised to hear that the Media side of the company would use such techniques. It doesn’t make it excusable but to his credit, he admitted the error and immediately contacted them to fix it.
I am more interested in the reason why it took someone like Andrew to find and report this issue. Should their algorithm have found this error (or Google’s)? Are they even checking for cloaking and keyword density at all or do some companies just have a free pass to do anything (Yahoo, CNN, NYTimes, etc.)?
It is a little concerning when Tim says that the issue is now resolved yet the page that WAS being cloaked is still stuffed with keywords, and this type of violation would get your site banned if their search team reviewed it.
The cloaking may be fixed but until they fix the rest of the page, I’ll be sure to use it as an example the next time they say anything about unnecessary keyword repetition that is of little value to the user.
May 23, 2007
This is interesting. I was reading this to gain a better understanding of what “cloaking” actually is. I can see why it would be a bit of a pain. Also, nabal, you should say too much, because you didn’t spell IT’S correctly either.
May 23, 2007
[...] days ago Agerhart.com posted their discovery that Yahoo! was cloaking their Autos page. As one of our resident programmers, Jeff, aptly put it, Yahoo! was practicing in [...]
May 24, 2007
[...] days ago Agerhart.com posted their discovery that Yahoo! was cloaking their Autos page. As one of our resident programmers, Jeff, aptly put it, Yahoo! was practicing in [...]
May 24, 2007
[...] days ago Agerhart.com posted their discovery that Yahoo! was cloaking their Autos page. As one of our resident programmers, Jeff, aptly put it, Yahoo! was practicing in [...]
May 24, 2007
[...] Yahoo! prins facand cloaking pentru motoarele de cautare (lol). Pentru cei care nu stiu, cloakingul este aratarea unui continut motoarelor de cautare (bogat in cuvinte cheie si care arata gen spam) si a altui continut vizitatorilor. In mod normal e motiv de ban pe motoarele de cautare (daca nu esti NY Times … sau Yahoo). Avand in vedere ca Yahoo are in propriile reguli interzise astfel de practici, faza asta e cam de 2 lei. [...]
May 24, 2007
[...] rules, what on earth is going on, oh my god the world is coming to an end blog posts & comments like these if that engineering manager hadn’t caught this at the last [...]
May 24, 2007
[...] days ago Agerhart.com posted their discovery that Yahoo! was cloaking their Autos page. As one of our resident programmers, Jeff, aptly put it, Yahoo! was practicing in [...]
May 24, 2007
[...] Originally posted by agerheart.com [...]
May 24, 2007
What surprises me is that a simple UA change detected this. I would have thought a corporate entity like Yahoo would be using ip-delivery.
May 24, 2007
Absolutely Dave…I think everyone was surprised!
May 25, 2007
[...] Yahoo Caught Cloaking. Will They Ban Themselves? - Interesting post about Yahoo practicing in “standard, run of the mill cloaking” of their Autos page. [...]
May 25, 2007
[...] ha pensato Yahoo! pubblicando pagine trasformiste nel portale auto.Sul suo sito Andrew Gerhart dimostra come la copia cache di Google differisca dal contenuto della [...]