Top 5 Most Contentious Factors

1. Cloaking by Cookie Detection 16.3% strong contention
2. Cloaking by JavaScript/Rich Media Support Detection 15.4% moderate contention
3. Hiding Text with same/similar colored text/background 15.3% moderate contention
4. Cloaking by IP Address 15.3% moderate contention
5. Cloaking by User Agent 15.2% moderate contention

Note: Consensus and contention percentages are calculated based on the standard deviations of contributor answers.

Participants were asked to apply the ranking factors to Google’s search engine, and although we’ve found that it’s largely applicable to other major US engines (Bing, Yahoo! & Ask), some variance almost certainly exists.