Cloaking
Cloaking is a technique aimed at deceiving search engines, in which the content presented to site users is different from that presented to search engine robots. As a rule, an over-optimized page that is loaded with keywords is created for robots. Some webmasters believe they can thus improve a site's ranking in the search results. Although, in fact, they only expose their site to the risk of excluding its pages from a search engine's index.
Yandex detected that I have this violation. How do I fix it?
You should completely refuse from using cloaking. Make sure that the site users and search engine robots are presented the same content.
After the violation on the website is eliminated, you can use the I fixed it button on the Security and violations page in Yandex.Webmaster to inform the robot of the actions you completed.
You can click the I fixed it button again for the same site after a month. Further, this period is increased up to three months to avoid the button misuse. Therefore, we recommend using the button only when you are sure that there are no more violations on the site.
If multiple users have website management rights in Yandex.Webmaster, agree on who will send the website for re-checking and when. After clicking the button, none of the users will be able to click it again within a month.
I deleted everything. When will restrictions be lifted?
The restrictions are usually lifted within a month after you eliminate the violations.
I'm making an experiment on my website: part of the website's audience is shown one page and the other part is shown a modified page. This is how I determine what type of page my site users like best. Is it treated as cloaking?
No, as it doesn't involve any deception of site users or search engines. It's important that the user who clicked through to your site from the search results is delivered the content they expected to see.
My site can determine which region the user came from and displays the corresponding content. Is this cloaking?
In this case, as in the previous one, there is no attempt to deceive. So this won't be treated as cloaking.
I did everything, but the restrictions aren't lifted
- Check if the site users and search engine robots are actually presented the same content. To do this, open the saved copies of the site pages and make sure they have the same content as the site itself.
- Check that enough time (more than a month) has passed after you clicked the I fixed it button. If this is not the case, Yandex algorithms may not have tracked the changes on the site yet.
