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Page Masking - To Dissemble or Not to Mask

May 4th, 2008 by Ostap

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Page dissembling can loosely be outlined as a proficiency victimized to present unlike entanglement pages under dissimilar portion. There are two primary reasons that citizenry use page dissembling:

i) It lets them to make a divide optimised page for each search engine and some other page that is esthetically delighting and intentional for their human visitors. When a search engine spider visits a site, the page that has been optimised for that search engine is presented to it. When a human visits a site, the page that was intentional for the human visitors is presented. The primary benefit of making this is that the human visitors do not need to be presented the Sir Frederick Handley Pages that have been optimised for the search engines, because the Pages that are intended for the search engines may not be esthetically delighting, and may incorporate an over-repetition of keywords.

ii) It lets them to conceal the source code of the optimised pages that they have made, and thence forecloses their contenders from being capable to imitate the source code.

Page dissembling is applied by victimisation some specialised masking scripts. A dissembling script is set up on the waiter, that notices whether it is a search engine or a human being that is questing a page. If a search engine is calling for a page, the masking script presents the page that has been optimised for that search engine. If a human being is bespeaking the page, the dissembling script presents the page that has been intentional for human beings.

There are two primary slipways by that the dissembling script can find whether a search engine or a human being is seeing a site:

i) The first and simplest way is by looking into the User-Agent variable. Each time anyone (be it a search engine spider or a web browser being runned by a human) requests a page from a site, it reports an User-Agent name to the site. More often than not, if a search engine spider requests a page, the User-Agent variable comprises the gens of the search engine. Thence, if the masking script observes that the User-Agent variable incorporates a gens of a search engine, it presents the page that has been optimised for that search engine. If the masking script makes not observe the gens of a search engine in the User-Agent variable, it presumes that the petition has been got by a human being and presents the page that was intentional for human beingness.

Withal, patch this is the simplest way to enforce a dissembling script, it is likewise the least safe. It is pretty easy to counterfeit the User-Agent variable, and therefore, person who wants to realize the optimised pages that are being presented to dissimilar search engines can easy do so.

ii) The sec and more complicated way is to apply I.P. (Cyberspace Communications protocol) based dissembling. This affects the usage of an I.P. database that incorporates a listing of the I.P. addresses of all cognized search engine wanderers. When a visitant (a search engine or a human) requests a page, the dissembling script checks the I.P. address of the visitant. If the I.P. address is demonstrated in the I.P. database, the dissembling script cognises that the visitant is a search engine and presents the page optimised for that search engine. If the I.P. address is not show in the I.P. database, the dissembling script presumes that a human has called for the page, and presents the page that is intended for human visitors.

Although more complicated than User-Agent based dissembling, I.P. based dissembling is more dependable and safe because it is very hard to forge I.P. addresses.

Today that you have an thought of what masking is all about and how it is applied, the question arises as to whether you should use page masking. The one news answer is “NO”. The ground is simple: the search engines do not like it, and will in all likelihood ban your site from their index if they happen extinct that your site uses masking. The ground that the search engines do not like page dissembling is that it precludes them from being capable to spider the like page that their visitors are travelling to understand. And if the search engines are forestalled from making so, they cannot be convinced of presenting relevant results to their exploiters. In the past, plenty of citizenry have made optimised pages for some extremely democratic keywords and then victimised page masking to occupy citizenry to their existent land sites that held nothing to do with those keywords. If the search engines let this to pass off, they would endure because their exploiters would abandon them and go to some other search engine that brought forth more relevant results.

Of course of study, an question arises as to how a search engine can notice whether or not a site uses page masking. There are three slipways by that it can do so:

i) If the site uses User-Agent masking, the search engines can merely direct a spider to a site that makes not report the gens of the search engine in the User-Agent variable. If the search engine realises that the page presented to this spider is dissimilar from the page that is presented to a spider that reports the gens of the search engine in the User-Agent variable, it cognizes that the site has employed page masking.

ii) If the site uses I.P. based dissembling, the search engines can direct a spider from a dissimilar I.P. address than any I.P. address that it has utilised antecedently. Since this is a novel I.P. address, the I.P. database that is employed for dissembling will not comprise this address. If the search engine finds that the page presented to the spider with the novel I.P. address is unlike from the page that is presented to a spider with a cognised I.P. address, it cognizes that the site has utilised page masking.

iii) A human representative from a search engine may visit a site to realize whether it uses dissembling. If she realizes that the page that is presented to her is unlike from the one being presented to the search engine spider, she cognises that the site uses masking.

Thus, when it comes up to page masking, my advice is simple: do not even conceive about victimisation it.

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