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Dear Google - This ain’t cloaking

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 2, 2008 in General

NOTE: Google updated its position on this topic and issued a retraction within a day of seeing the outrage expressed by the SEO community. As long as a site is blocking the regional search engine crawlers along with all other traffic from the region, Google won’t have a problem.

In my opinion, if you’re blocking visitors from a specific region, you have no need to be listed in that region’s search results.

Search Engine Roundtable reported this morning that Google claims blocking countries and regions from your Web site might be considered cloaking. Googler JohnMu made this horrifically erroneous remark:

Blocking all users outside of the US from being able to see your site
would likely be considered cloaking and would be against our Webmaster Guidelines. Instead of blocking these users automatically, I would recommend that you add blocks based on the user’s activity, not based on his location.

Last time I checked Google’s definition of cloaking, there was absolutely no such provision in their guidelines.

So let’s take a look at why John’s remark was way out of line and totally inappropriate.

First and foremost, Google in no way has the right to decide who gets to see your Web site. If you have no reason to show your content outside the United States (or inside it), you have every right to block access to your content. In fact, several international corporations have been doing just that for years in the entertainment industry (and I ain’t talking about adult entertainment).

Google in no way has the right, power, or authority to be dictating to people whom they have to show their content to.

Secondly, Google can easily work with Webmasters who need to block access by country or region simply by allowing Webmasters to opt out of those countries or regions through Webmaster Tools.

When you’re involved in a symbiotic relationship with the Web, the way a search engine is, you need to go with the flow. There are plenty of Web sites that block access based on country and they do it for many different reasons.

That ain’t cloaking. It’s got nothing to do with serving one type of content to search engines and serving a different type of content to users.

Google needs to stand down on this issue and work with the Web community to address real needs.