| The client site, http://www.autoaccessoriesgarage.com, is engaging in cloaking. Go to
http://www.autoaccessoriesgarage.com/Seat-Covers/ Use the picker to pick a particular make and model:
http://www.autoaccessoriesgarage.com/Seat-Covers/_Acura-RDX?... So far so good, no problem. Your browser now has a cookie that says you're interested in just this make and model. Now for the problem: use the nav links to go to "Cargo trunk liners", and where do you land? http://www.autoaccessoriesgarage.com/Cargo-Trunk-Liners That's cloaking -- it's not showing you all of the liners, just the ones relevant to the make and model you picked earlier. Instead, the site should add _Acura-RDX?year=2008 to the url, just like before. Why do search engines care about this stuff? Now imagine you type in [auto accessories cargo trunk liners] into your favorite search engine, and the result is http://www.autoaccessoriesgarage.com/Cargo-Trunk-Liners ... what does the search engine think you'll see? It has no idea, really. |
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/en/cookie$... (see the response is marked best answer by Matt Cutts - head of web spam at Google).
If I have never been to the site I'd land on the unfiltered page that would be a good result, and if I had a cookie (which seems to be a session cookie from a quick look) then it is likely I was recently at the site and so the filters are likely relevant but if not they are easy to change.
'Cloaking' has negative connotations and is more of a concern when there is an attempt to mislead search engine. In this instance, there is a big problem with your suggested fix -- the Panda algorithm would see many very similar pages which might actually make things worse (which I agree is silly, as your solution would otherwise have some upsides, but there is often a trade off in these situations).