Google: Showing Structured Data Markup Just To GoogleBot Is Cloaking

Dec 26, 2017 - 8:33 am 5 by

Google Cloaking

Did you know that if you decide to just show your structured data markup to GoogleBot, Google's spiders/crawlers, and hide it from normal users in the source code, that would be considered cloaking. Cloaking is against Google's webmaster guidelines and can result in a manual action.

Google said you need to show both humans and GoogleBot the same HTML and not just show GoogleBot the HTML.

The question came up on Twitter and Google's John Mueller said that it is cloaking to do that. The reason was somewhat legit, the webmaster wanted to hide their structured markup from their competitors.

But no, you cannot do that without potentially getting into hot water with Google.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 24, 2025

Jan 24, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Volatility, European Manual Actions, Quality Raters Updated, Bing Hides Google & Yahoo AI Chat

Jan 24, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines Gain 11 New Pages

Jan 24, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

New Google Ads Performance‬‭ Max‬‭ Features

Jan 24, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Spammers Encourage You To Waste Time Disavowing Links

Jan 24, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads To Drop Certification For Some Advertisers & Reorganizes Verification Docs

Jan 24, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: When Google Maps Shows Embarrassing Business Photos Over Your Photos