Another Friday afternoon and another great opportunity for a quick and dirty SEOmoz Vidcast. This time around Rand walks us through one of his oh-so-famous (at least to us Mozzers) white board illustrations explaining the justification and methodology behind cloaking (the white hat variety anyway).
This is probably a little bit remedial for some of our more high-level readers, but the video is short, fun and has a bit of a surprise at the end that I think everyone will get a good laugh out of.
Without further ado...
PS - Come on, it's Friday!
By: Scott Willoughby
SEOmoz Vidcast - Rand Explains Cloaking
Blogging
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Good music choice!
"Wildcat" by Ratatat for those who may be wondering.
Very illuminating. I assume we are going to see a line item on the 2007 SEOmoz financials for whiteboard expenses?
The only thing funnier than bear nuts was the attempt to cover it up and somebody saying "too late". Classic stuff!
Four whiteboards to be exact. And an astounding quantity of markers and whiteboard cleaner.
I’m eagerly waiting for the next installment of Rand’s “Whiteboard Tutorial Fridays.”
That was me trying to cover it up. I am apparently the only Mozzer with any shame :O
That was hilarious! Good casual videos are great to watch while eating lunch...
Haha I almost fell out of my chair laughing when the Google bot popped up on screen.
HAHAHA
Me too, Google Bot has been a hit.
Great video guys, and I agree you guys have way to much fun.
When it's not fun anymore, we close the doors. So far, so good!
Glad to hear everyone liked the GoogleBot cameo. I thought y'all would get a kick out of him.
Very nicely done! You guys are having way too much fun, even for a Friday!
Thanks, really liked the bot. You're going to have to copywrite that thing before it gets sucked into the dark side...
I've been watching this debate with some interest because I work for a news website that does "first click free" with Google and google gets our info without a sub but a user trying to access us after that first click gets a sub page.
I wonder if this isn't technically cloaking since we present different information to googlebot than we do to the end user. You can google stuff you can't access unless you've paid for a subscription.
Hmmmm....
Thanks for the basic rundown of cloaking. As an end user I have to say that it can be very annoying sometimes clicking on a link in the SERPs to be taken to the sign up page. I am a member, though not of the premium content, so I sign in and all is fine.
But it does getting annoying sometimes having to make the extra click and there are times when I'll click non WMW results because of it. Not too often though since there's usually good info at WMW.
I wonder if WMW loses some potential readers who see the sign up and rush for the back button. I know I'm generally not going to pay a membership fee to a site without having seen some of the content first. For those of us familiar with what's there it's not a big deal, but to someone new it might be.
So, if you guys use this at SEOmoz, you will need to cloak also the feeds no? so.. bye bye feedburner.
*giggles uncontrollably*
The content is great, especially for a n00b like me. Thanks!
quick and dirty--ha!
good stuff.
Great video, very interesting.
Go Googlebot!
And great vid Rand, it will be interesting to see what Google thinks of this type of behaviour down the track a little.
Priceless!
Rand - Please don’t let my school district see that you can give a lesson while holding the white board or they’ll take my easel away!
Great job.
Christina Niven
he he he... Looks like teachers all over the world have this problem. ;-)
Great for a Friday afternoon, especially with the Googlebot cameo.
I half expected Googlebot to return in the video.
If Rand is ever gone on a video day, will Googlebot stand in for him?
I think the surprise ending might have been a little TMI ;)
The cameo from Googlebot was great. I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to start seeing him pop up all over the web now. Rand do you fly over the night sky of Seattle as Googlebot protecting sites from duplicate contnet and scraper issues.
By day he's mild mannered Rand Fishkin, but at night when the SEOmoz offices are closed for the day...
"Look, up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's...Googlebot."
Thank you do much for doing this. I will be forwarding this to one of my clients - it's probably the easiest way to explain cloaking to someone!
Am I the only one who got a Weird Al video on the first click? It was like a special Friday bonus treat.
Jesus! What the hell?! This is now the second time in a row that iFilm has served "White & Nerdy" to the feedreader version of the post. I'm gonna have to write those fools. I mean, sure, Rand's white and a little nerdy, but come on.
The comments made a whole lot more sense on the second viewing, that's for sure :) It was the RSS feed, pulled from NetVibes (although I doubt that matters much).
Any reason behind using iFilm? I haven't really come across them apart from the proposal film and the other videos you've had up here.
Seemed to work pretty smoothly for me (though it choked Ubuntu in the office yesterday - I think my flash player isn't up to date enough).
Their interface is pretty user-friendly and we've gotten reaally good feedback about how smooth their streaming is. Plus, they were very cool to deal with re: My Super Proposal, so I figure we should throw 'em a little love.
BTW, congrats on making the Rec'd List, Will. Welcome to the family.
Cool. Well a 'moz endorsement is good enough for me (and the video sure was smooth). I'll have to check 'em out.
It's always good to find new tools...
Feels good to join the family ;) We'll have to get ourselves a trip out to Seattle sometime soon to catch up again.
I could read this page all day! (Deliberately bad anchor text to make you click through). [Edit to sort out blockquote]
Scott iFilm worked great again. This time it did pause on me a couple of times so I didn't make it all the way through, but the pauses seem shorter than what I usually get with other video and it's a smoother transition between the stopping and starting. For me iFilm is working great so I hope you keep using it.
Poor Matt. Why is Matt being associated with explosive poop so much these days?
Have the words "bear nuts" ever been on an SEO blog before? Or did we raise the bar a little bit more?
Edit: It was "nuts" not "balls." Why am I writing this? Can I go home now? I think I need to.
Give it a week or two, and SEOmoz will be ranked #1 for "bear balls"!
I had to fire up Google and see who your competition was for this great keyword... and it looks like you may have to mention Bear privates a few more times to break the top 10...
Actually, the SERP made me think of Janes recent 'reputation management' article when I saw this in the results:
Indiana Nut Growers Association Home Page
wpe1.jpg (753 bytes) Hickory: One of the tallest growing nut trees and the slowest to bear nuts. However, it is very hardy and tasty and some selected ...
Wonder if the Indiana Nut Growers Association knows they're getting traffic Bear porn terms!? :)
Thanks Rand, clear and concise.
I love the Google Bot dance! Priceless. Well explained too Rand!
I'm home sick, and Google bot made me laugh. Although it did hurt my abs a little...
Do you pop in the 8-Minute Abs video when you're sick?
Nah, it's all the coughing I did today and last night.