Why Spotify might get in trouble for cloaking

Why Spotify might get in trouble for cloaking

Oh, oh. Spotify might get in trouble for cloaking. Here is why:
I was wondering why Spotify gained to many rankings this week:

Their SEO Visibility (and probably traffic - and maybe revenue) increased by 30%!

Apparently, their rankings improved specifically for artists:

For example, they are ranking for "Sia" out of nowhere on page 1 on Google:

This is a term that's searched for > 1,100,000x/month.

So I checked the page for "Sia", to see what they provide that Google likes so much. But when you get to the page, all you see is a login:

"Now that can't be enough", I thought. So I switched my user agent to check the page from a search engine's view and saw tons of content and internal links:

The page even has an unfold content section with 786 words!

It looks like MTV is using the exact same text: a biography of the artist. Questionable who copied from who, but I'd bet my money on Spotify copying from MTV, since Spotify just gained the rankings for artists this week and MTV is ranking higher in search results when searching for the text.

All in all, this could be interpreted as severe cloaking from Google's side, because the search engine sees something completely different than the user... And ranking that well with a text that has been published elsewhere before is surely not what Google understands as quality.*

*Please note: my goal is not to harm Spotify or accuse anyone of having done something illegal. 

Edwin Romero

E-commerce SEO Strategist ?? | Building SEO Advocacy ?? | #PragmaticSEO ??

9 年

These are fair points. I never pegged Spotify as a company that would compete in traditional search. But there they are.

Philipp Kl?ckner

Tech Analyst ? Investor & Advisor ? Digital Marketing & Organic Growth ? aka Pip Kloeckner

9 年

"my goal is not to harm Spotify" :D IF your goal was "not to harm Spotify" - You shouldn't have published it. You'll fail at that goal, I'm sure. IF it wasn't your goal to harm Spotify - You still need to live with the fact that it will. But what was your goal then?

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Tobias Moller

Trust & Safety Analyst bei TeamViewer

9 年

Well done!

Brian Zhou

Engineering + Coffee

9 年

Very interesting post!

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