---
type: Glossary Term
title: "Cloaking"
description: "Serving materially different content to crawlers vs users — explicitly forbidden by Google."
resource: "https://prerendering.com/glossary/cloaking"
tags: [rendering, glossary]
timestamp: 2026-05-11T00:00:00Z
---

# Cloaking

Serving materially different content to crawlers vs users — explicitly forbidden by Google.

Cloaking detects user-agent and serves different content based on whether the visitor is a crawler. Google guidelines forbid it; sites that cloak risk manual penalties. Compliant prerendering serves the same semantic content as a static snapshot for performance reasons, which is allowed.

## Related

- [What Is Cloaking in SEO? Prerendering Compliance](/blog/what-is-cloaking-seo-prerendering-compliance.md)