Is Yahoo! Autos Cloaking?

May 22, 2007 - 8:05 am 4 by
Filed Under Cloaking

A WebmasterWorld thread links to a post at Agerhart.com showing screen shots of Yahoo! Autos cloaking.

Cloaking is when a search bot is given one page of content, while a normal user is given another set of content.

If you go to http://autos.yahoo.com/used-cars/forsale.html and compare it with the Google Cache version, to me they look identical. So possibly, Yahoo! changed it. But in the screen captures, only the Google version had the "used cars" anchor text by every state break down. You can see the before and after at Agerhart.com.

It seems like Yahoo Autos is currently not cloaking at this moment.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Tim Mayer of Yahoo! has confirmed on May 22nd edition of The Daily Search Cast that Yahoo Autos has changed the page since this has been reported. So, Yahoo Autos was cloaking. FYI, this wasn't the first time Yahoo! was caught cloaking, there also were spotted using unethical search practices in July 2005.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 8, 2025

May 8, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Volatility Spiked Thursday - May 8th

May 8, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Launches New Charts: Bar, Column and Time-Series

May 8, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Tests Read Reviews Button & Appointment Tags On Local Listings

May 8, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Apple Says Google Searches Down On Safari & Google Says Searches Are Up

May 8, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Tests Alignment Changes To Search Result Snippets

May 8, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Trends Releases "Hot Trends" Tool