Changing A Bit Of Content Based On IP Address; Google Likely Won't Penalize You

May 6, 2021 - 7:31 am 1 by

Google Cloaking

Technically, if you change your content based on the IPs or user agents visiting that piece of content, specifically giving GoogleBot different content than your users, that would be against Google's cloaking policy and warrant a Google penalty. But based on the intent of that change, most likely, you won't be penalized.

Google defines cloaking as "the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected."

Now, if you change parts of your page's content for reasons beyond manipulating Google, then Google likely won't care and likely won't penalize you. I mean, technically, Google can penalize your site, but it likely won't according to Gary Illyes of Google.

Gary Illyes said in a Reddit thread "I can't promise no action, but if it's not done for manipulating rankings or actual spamming, I'd be mighty surprised if the WebSpam team cared."

This isn't really new, Google generally takes into account the intent of the action before manually assigning a penalty. The intent just might not alway be obvious, although, Google's webspam team has a lot of experience with these things.

Forum discussion at Reddit.

 

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: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google Confirms Your Content Be Indexed But Not On All Data Centers