Cloaking is the practice of presenting a version of a web page to search engines that is different from the version presented to users, with the intention of deceiving the search engines and affecting the page's ranking in the search index. Google doesn't view the ethical use of multi-variate testing tools such as Website Optimizer as cloaking.
We encourage constructive testing -- optimizing your web pages benefits advertisers as well as users, by increasing conversions and by presenting the most desired information more efficiently. To be sure that your experiments are not construed as cloaking, we suggest following the general guidelines below:
- Your variations should uphold the 'spirit' of your original page's content -- they shouldn't change its meaning or people's general perception of it.
- Keep your source code updated. An experiment should be ended when sufficient data has been collected, and the original page source updated accordingly.
- Your original page should always be shown to a non-trivial percentage of your users. It's okay to use Website Optimizer to briefly run your winning combination after stopping an experiment, but be sure to update your test page's source code to reflect that winning combination soon afterwards.
We reserve the right to take action on any site that violates Google's Webmaster Guidelines or if we feel that users are being deceived or abused.
For example, if we find a site running a single non-original combination at 100% for a number of months, or if a site's original page is loaded with keywords that don't relate to the combinations being shown to visitors, we may remove that site from our index.
