Help on avoiding cloaking

[div]

Sorry if I am jumping in, I am newbie who knows very little about SE optimsation or cloaking.

I have hidden my site map from normal browswers, as they are using certain applications like 'black widow' to steal my content.

I assume this is cloaking?

Are there any other ways of stopping an indiviual going through the entire site stealing content?

Thanks

Div

[Alan Perkins]

Hi div

I felt it necessary to break your question out of the thread in which you posted it.

How have you hidden your site map? It may be cloaking, or it may not.Are there any other ways of stopping an indiviual going through the entire site stealing content?There are no sure fire methods, since your site is in the public eye - that's the whole point of having a web site. But you own the content, so there are steps you can take once it HAS been stolen. I don't see quite what the issue is though. If you cloak, you still have to have content for people to see. Are you not worried this content will be stolen?

[div]

Thank you for your reply and moving the thread.

In the past I have seen people using various agents to download my entire site.

The only way in which they could do this was via the site map, as not all pages were available from the front page of the site. I can see that this might not be best practice but that is the way in which the site has worked.

So in order to stop people using these agents the full site map is only available to search engine agents. I understand people can fake search engine agents but that is the risk I take.

Yes I am concerned that this isn't good practice, but it is heart breaking to see 3000 pages of content being grabbed by someone else. Plus if they released my content, surely this would ruin my search engine rankings?

Thanks Again

Div

[Alan Perkins]

If they really want to steal your pages, they will use the search engine to find out the URLs - not your site map. It's pointless cloaking that.

[amica_webmaster]

What is it you believe is being done with your content? Are you aware of specific cases of inappropriate use?

[div]

Reply to Alan -

Yes I can see that, but it makes it harder - I have done this for a long time and not been penalised for this yet. Ideally I wouldn't do this and I am looking at other ideas.

Reply Amica_Webmaster -

We put togther a lot of 'specfic' news content which some how seems to appear on other peoples sites. Recentley we have started to watermark all our images. It drives me mad.

DiV

[markymark]

That kind of stealing is a major irritant, but you have to weigh that against the possibility of causing yourself problems with the search engines if they determine you are cloaking your content or spamming in some way.

In this instance, it doesn't seem worth taking the risk.

[div]

I am beginning to think the same, I don't like the idea of the cloaking anything.

My next deliema is I was thniking of making the news content free to subscribers and then I read on here that I shouldn't allow robot in, if not all readers can access the content.

That seems very un-fair, especially as the content is free but I guess search engine aren't rational.

Is it wise to keep all the site maps in the root directory, there are 3500 pages in the site and I assume this will have be split down into many different maps.

DiV

[amica_webmaster]

Div,

There are also legitimate reasons for spidering websites. In my work, we sometimes spider sites in order to perform research on the content. That is, to determine what terms are used in the site, how frequently, where they are found in relation to other terms.

Meta