My understanding is to be honest.
That is simple. Fight with Google who have many polices with top "Kung Fu", is stupid.

..is it verified by anyone (e.g. Matt Cutts?) that the webmasterworld redirects aren't sneaky?

Well it's not cloaking *rolls eyes* (LOL)

I thought they had fixed it? Are they still auto-redirecting to a sales / signup page when non-registered users come in from Google?

And NYT website do not use cloaking of course...
Google should put all the sites on the same level and not allow this kind of exceptions...

One of the problems with Google's Webmaster Guidelines is that they are contradictory. If you follow Google's advice to create great content for users (not for search engines), you can come into conflict with quite a few of the other guidelines.

For example, if you write for users you often end up with pages containing more than 100 links (such as the front page of this blog).

Google's guidelines are about how you can make things easier for Google.

TOMHTML, kind of reminds me of, "'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

I think the question at play here is whether or not it adds value to the user.

IN this case, Google is being shown an actual article that the user would find value in (if they were a member).

It's a little different than being shown text that isn't the same as what the user sees.

For example, showing a list of keywords then redirecting me to my an article that doesn't contain that list.

I think, in Google's opinion, signup pages aren't considered sneaky.

In some cases (where the information can't be found elsewhere), it adds value to the user by letting them know it's out there ... but not free.

Do I agree with it? No.. but I'm just trying to put myself in Google's shoes for a minute.

JohnMu:
> I thought they had fixed it? Are they still auto-redirecting to
> a sales / signup page when non-registered users come in
> from Google?

Same as before: sometimes I get the signup page, sometimes I don't. Dunno what triggers it.

Tn:
> ..is it verified by anyone (e.g. Matt Cutts?) that
> the webmasterworld redirects aren't sneaky?

AFAIK they decided to not give any public statement so far, but that's a kind of statement too.

Just to be clear, our position on cloaking remains the same (not to do it). I enjoyed feedthebot.com, but as the feedthebot.com itself mentions, it doesn't claim to be affiliated with Google, and doesn't set Google policies on things like what is cloaking or what isn't cloaking.

Philipp, which page on feedthebot.com was talking about WMW or registration pages?

Matt, I don't think he's written anything about cloaking yet as Philipp said in the original post, "Not all guidelines are covered yet, though, e.g. “Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.”"

   I think the rest was an editorial comment by Philipp himself.

From what I know about feedthebot, he travels a lot and can be gone from the computer for some time.

> Philipp, which page on feedthebot.com was talking
> about WMW or registration pages?

No no, that's exactly what I was saying: <<Not all guidelines are covered yet, though, e.g. “Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.”>>

When I visited FeedtheBot the first thing I was hoping to find were elaborations on the "sneaky redirect" issue, but it was (still is) unlinked.
http://www.feedthebot.com/guidelines.html

Hello all, this is Patrick Sexton from feedthebot.com

Thank you for the post, but you are "sneakily redirecting" your opinions into this post. I have written absolutely nothing thus far about "sneaky re-directs", and when I do it will be in such a way that is useful to a new webmaster and will not include any particular website or my opinions of them. You have an informative site, I was surprized be associatited with a controversy I was no part of, but I appreciate the mention none the less :)

Matt, thanks for the mention, and to answer your above question... nowhere. I do not mention this issue anywhere within my site, the author of this post threw that in there, I do not know why, it has nothing to do with my website.

Johnweb, thanks for mentioning that I am gone from my computer (I have been for a couple weeks) I can not always respond to such things and to thank everyone i need to thank sometimes and I will add that fact to my "about" page. Thank you again. (in fact I am only going to be around for a few days and then I will be gone again).

> I have written absolutely nothing thus far
> about "sneaky re-directs"

Uhm, Patrick: this is exactly what I said in my post. That you have written nothing about that.

I understood your post, but it seems others did not. Just wanted to throw my two-cents in :)

I have gotten a couple of questions about it. Sorry i couldn't of responded earlier. I like how you covered the newest change in the Guidelines with the side by side comparison, looks good.