Signal
Content equivalence (no cloaking)
Serving equivalent facts in different formats at one URL is legitimate content negotiation, but serving materially different content by user-agent is cloaking, a spam violation that reduces ranking eligibility.
Per-platform status
Where a platform documents relevant behavior, its status and source are shown. Undocumented platforms show "unknown" - honest unknowns, never invented.
| Platform | Status | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Unknown | Not documented by this platform. | - |
| Gemini / Google AI Mode | Unknown | Not documented by this platform. | - |
| Perplexity | Unknown | Not documented by this platform. | - |
| Copilot | Reported | Bing's current Webmaster Guidelines list cloaking among practices that reduce ranking eligibility and grounding visibility across Bing and Copilot experiences. | Source (opens in new tab) · verified 2026-07-08 |
| Claude | Unknown | Not documented by this platform. | - |
Evidence and sources
This signal is typed spec-fact (Very high confidence).
How to act on this
Keep the facts identical across HTML, Markdown, .md mirror, and feed; never vary the content itself by user-agent (throttling a request is access control, not cloaking).
Related checklist items
Handbook chapters