WhenU, a company that has been accused of employing spyware tactics, has been removed from the search indexes of the internet’s 2 biggest search engines, Yahoo and Google. WhenU was removed for using cloaking methods to improve their search engine ranking.
Cloaking is, as defined by Google, “used to describe a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site. In other words, the webserver is programmed to return different content to Google than it returns to regular users, usually in an attempt to distort search engine rankings. This can mislead users about what they’ll find when they click on a search result.”
According to ZDNet, WhenU’s use of search engine cloaking came to light by an investigation by anti-spyware crusader Ben Edelman, a Harvard student who has testified on spyware cases before.
The method of cloaking that got WhenU removed was, in an effort of improve its image, the creation of pages that borrowed from a range of articles that mentioned WhenU. These pages were then submitted to search engines to be crawled, giving WhenU a larger page count, and thusly. The problem was, when the link from the SERP was clicked, people were redirected to other WhenU pages. This is cloaking as laid out by Google’s webmaster FAQ.
WhenU’s software, which comes included in many application bundles like Kazaa, has been called spyware by industry experts. WhenU sells pop-up and pop-under ads to companies based upon the monitoring of web surfing habits. WhenU monitors these habits with its software, which keeps tabs on web surfer behavior.
Because of its business practices, WhenU is not only having problems with search engines. The company is involved in lawsuits that claim WhenU’s ads have violated trademarks and copywritten material.
A statement from Avi Nader, CEO of WhenU, claims that the search engine cloaking was done by a search engine optimization company that WhenU has ceased doing business with. “The moment we were alerted to this today, it was taken down,” Nader said, speaking of the cloaking incident. “We anticipate being relisted in the major search engines soon.”
Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News
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