What this site is doing? Does it look like cloaking to you?

[fablau]

Hi here,

I was studying our competitors SEO strategies, and I have noticed that one of our major competitors has setup something pretty weird from a SEO stand point for which I would like to know your thoughts about because I can't find a clear explanation for it.

Here is the deal: the site is musicnotes.com, and their product pages are located inside the /sheetmusic/ directory, so if you want to see all their product pages indexed on Google, you can just type in Google:

site:musicnotes.com inurl:/sheetmusic/

Then you will get about 290,000 indexed pages. No, here is the tricky part: try to click on one of those links, then you will get a 302 redirect to a page that includes a meta "noindex, nofollow" directive.

Isn't that pretty weird? Why would they want to "nonidex, nofollow" a page from a 302 redirect? And how in the heck the redirecting page is still in the index?!! And how Google can allow that?!

All this sounds weird to me and remind me spammy techniques of the 90s called "cloaking"... what do you think?

[WesleySmits]

I don't think the word 'cloaking' is the right word since that is hiding content from users which you do want to present to the search engines. It is pretty weird though. A 302 should be a temporarily redirect and that they want to no-index the link it redirects to could make sense in some way.

If they are planning on changing the website then they could be temporarily redirecting the url's to new ones which they don't want to be indexed. When they have made the necessary changes they will remove the redirect and possibly the no-index pages.

Seems like a weird workaround but i've seen people thinking in weirder ways before.
It's more probably that they suffered from a panda or penguin update and that just like you they thought they could recover with a no-index (and a redirect?).

Pretty weird story, curious to see if anyone else has some kind of explanation to why someone would set their site up like this.

[fablau]

Thanks Wesley, that makes sense... but what's most weird to me is that Google keeps their pages in the index despite this trick... unless the 302 redirect allows legitimately that (maybe for a limited time)?

[WesleySmits]

Apperently Google keeps the original URL in the index as the source. It some ways it makes sense to do this.
It is still a pretty weird trick and I still don't know a good reason to do this. Would like to know if their are any consequences to this weird 'technique'.

[fablau]

Yes, I'd like to know that tool.

A question: do you offer SEO consultation?

Thank you again Wesley.

[WesleySmits]

At the moment I am very busy with a couple of projects. In general I do work as a SEO consultant.
Actually i'm a programmer, but down the line I started to fall in love with SEO and started to do that too.

[fablau]

Ok, nice to know.. we are always looking for passionate people that can work with us. Thanks!

[WesleySmits]

If you still need SEO and/or programming advice/work done after the summer let me know

[fablau]

Sure I will! Thanks!