Cloaking is the concept of delivering one usually keyword-heavy Web page to a search engine, while serving an entirely different page to everyone else. The idea is to trick the search engine into thinking that it is selecting a prime match for a search request. Search engines consider cloaking an act of spamming. If cloaking is detected, Web pages may be demoted or removed from the search engine's listings. At the very least, the ranking that was gained through cloaking will disappear. Therefore, Web developers are generally advised not to use cloaking as a means to boost search engine rankings.
