[Kye]

Showing different content to Google and visitors is genuinely against Google's webmaster guidelines. It will get you delisted. It's known as cloaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en

[lovemenot]

>> It's bad luck to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular people see.

It's [against policy] to return something different to GoogleBot than what regular people see.

The facts are on your side, but GP's language choice remains interesting. Not right now perhaps, but down the road?

[Kye]

I can't tell if this is a bit where you play the oblivious pedant, or if you can't tell they were referring to this policy. Either way, I don't think they were suggesting some cosmic influence.

[lovemenot]

@Kye No pedantry from here. I had already understood the policy. So this comment wasn't about the policy, it was all about the language. You seem to wish to understand, so ...

It was a pretty wide tangent from the start. I imagine (perhaps incorrectly) that it may eventually become common for people to understand algorithm-lore as say the Runes were once understood. I interpreted the language used here as a harbinger.

[wolco]

Google also sends google-bot without the header. If it notices different content it will take the public version as truth.

So many people are doing this but not getting delisted. Not sure how solid a rule it still is.