By any mechanism, geolocation, cookies, headers or scripts, showing the crawler something different from the user is cloaking. I keep the crawler and user experience the same in substance. Any divergence between crawler-served and user-served content. Same cloaking exposure regardless of mechanism (IP, UA, headers).
Why does different content to crawler vs user (any mechanism) matter for AI search?
Same cloaking exposure regardless of mechanism (IP, UA, headers).
How do you fix it?
Audit for any conditional serving; unify it.
How do you find it on your site?
- Compare the crawler-fetched page against the user-facing page across templates.
- Test from different locations and cookie states if your site personalises.
- Eliminate substantive differences between what crawlers and users receive.
- Where personalisation is needed, keep the core indexable content constant.
Which ranking and citation factors does it touch?
Content parity between crawler and user is a baseline trust requirement. Divergence risks a manual action that is hard to recover from.
What is the impact?
Severe; penalty risk. Direct.
What is the evidence?
Serving crawlers different content is cloaking. Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search
Frequently asked questions about different content to crawler vs user (any mechanism)
What does "Different content to crawler vs user (any mechanism)" mean?
Any divergence between crawler-served and user-served content.
How do you fix different content to crawler vs user (any mechanism)?
Audit for any conditional serving; unify it.