Cloaking Your Hummer
September 1st, 2007 by Michael Gray in Grayhat SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
While I’m generally not in the habit of outting websites who are bending or breaking the rules, when you reach the level of BMW or even Hummer the gloves are off, and you’re fair game …
I was working on a piece for a client project, and looking to link directly to a page with info about the original H1 Hummer. I kept getting stuck in a useless flash applications with no ability to directly deep link, so I did a site search [site:hummer.com h1] found the page I wanted, but everytime I clicked through I kept getting caught in the same damn flash application again. After going back to the results page I noticed they had text in the cache so I got a little curious.
Using the prefbar I found that by disabling javascript I was able to access a completely different page. Try it for yourself visit the H1 Hummer page with js on and then off.
Aside from a few minor visual issues, I actually like the text version, however I’ve worked with enough “old school” advertising people to know it’s not what they want to see. They like the “sizzle” of snazy graphics that flash applications deliver, in fact flash is pretty ubiquitous for car manufacturer websites. However I can see their point, when your selling a luxury item like a hummer you need some romance and some razzle dazzle, which straight HTML just doesn’t deliver.
So what’s the deal is hummer going to get booted from Google? While I can see the justification for using flash, it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t serving the same content to googlebot as to the humans. I’m not in charge of the Google index, but if they didn’t get some sort of penalty I’d say that’s another case of the uneven application of punishment Google is known for (*cough* wordpress-hot-nacho *cough*).
What’s the lesson here, if you’re going to cloak do it the right way via IP (thats why it’s called IP delivery folks). Using things like user-agents, JS, or some other scripting method may save you time and money up front, but they are always going to come back and bite you in the ass at some point down the road … something to think about …
Sphere It
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:26 am
I wouldn’t say they crossed the threshold to real cloaking here.
What you get, when you visit the h1.html without flash or javascript enabled is the same exact text that you get in the “H1″ section of the flash. It’s even nicely formatted, so it really qualifies as a no-flash version of the same content in the flash. The flash is opened by the swfobject routine, which does not redirect to another page, but rather rewrites the non-flash content of the page with the flash object.
I don’t see real cloaking going on here. It’s just the way to show search engines (and no-flash people) your flash-content.
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:31 am
Interesting find. It looks like the JavaScript is checking to see whether Flash is installed. If it is then the page overlays the SWF file on top of the HTML, else sends you to http://www.hummer.com/?goto_page=/h1/highlights/h1_highlights_story.swf&goto_nav=h1&country=us
Nice contrast between the design quality of the HTML and Flash versions…
September 2nd, 2007 at 4:17 am
Hummer, like everthing else.
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:14 am
I wouldn’t call showing different content depending the user’s JS/flash setting as cloaking at all. Unless you regard showing an HTML page in lieu of a flash page cloaking as well.
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I came across a company that sells CMS packages specifically to the auto industry. I looked at a few of their customers and was totally amazed at all the cloaking and shady techniques they were employing. Sounds very similar to what you’re describing. If Google does decide to dish out a penalty, you might find a bunch of auto websites disappearing overnight.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
“…without flash or javascript enabled is the same exact text that you get in the “H1″ section of the flash.”
Not really. If they were going to be completely white hat about it they would have a page for each section just like in the flash. Adding the content from the entire H1 category to 1 page is a little borderline. Hummer certainly won’t get smacked on it but the chances are high your average everyday Joe will get smacked by the spam coppers.
Just because it looks nice and it’s formatted doesn’t mean it complies with “the holy guidelines”
September 18th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I don’t know if they still do it but acura.com was doing some serious cloaking about a year ago that allowed them to deep link into flash. Google “site:acura.com” and start clicking results you’ll see what I mean. I tried doing something similar with one of my flash sites and google took it out of the index completely, so yea, not exactly fair…