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

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 18, 2025

Dec 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google's Danny Sullivan & John Mueller On SEO For AI: It's The Same

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

Google Updates JavaScript SEO Doc With Setting Canonical URL Advice

Dec 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Gemini 3 Flash For Google AI Mode - Now Rolling Out

Dec 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Reviews Disappearing Bug Reportedly Fixed

Dec 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Bing Ads

Microsoft Tests Underlines In Bing Ad Description Snippets

Dec 18, 2025 - 7:11 am
 
Previous Story: Google Confirms Your Content Be Indexed But Not On All Data Centers