Is it Cloaking? New York Times

[ihelpyou]

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchd...le.php/3613561

Danny Sullivan asks in his article if the New York Times is cloaking. He then answers his own questions like this; "Yes it is".

Is it?

My answer:

A BIG FAT NO!!

Google is NOT being deceived at all. Cloaking is deceiving. Period. Sullivan loves to lump together many forms of content delivery to call it cloaking. Cloaking is deceiving the search engine. Period.

Funny thing about all of this is that we have debated with him time and time and time again about what cloaking is and is not, but he simply does not get it. I doubt he ever will.

Even people like Phil Craven do NOT call what the Times is doing cloaking. He's smart enough to know it is NOT cloaking. It amazes me that something that seems soooo simple, is real hard to grasp by people.

Now if the question is this:

Is the searcher/user being deceived in some way? I'd have to say YES THEY ARE. I hate it if I click on a listing when looking for content, and I'm given a login screen saying I have to be a member to view the content, or I have to subscribe to view it.

But this is NOT cloaking. Google is given permission to view and index the content. Google knows all about what is going on.

This would be like these forums allowing spiders to view and index in our "private" forum, and when a user clicks the link in Google they are sent to a page saying they must subscribe to view the content. This is NOT cloaking, and it's NOT spam. Period.

When is Danny Sullivan going to understand this?