No, Scrunch’s Agent Experience Platform (AXP) is not considered cloaking. It doesn’t violate Google's guidelines or any other search platform's policies. AXP optimizes content for AI answer clarity, not manipulation, and only targets LLM retrieval bots—not traditional search crawlers like Googlebot or Bingbot.

Additional context: Google defines cloaking as serving different content to search crawlers versus users in order to manipulate search rankings and mislead people, specifically to drive users to click on a search result under false pretenses.

Example

For example, if a website shows different content to crawlers versus users with deceptive intent (i.e., to mislead or manipulate) in an attempt to trick search engines and their users, that would violate Google’s terms of service.

AXP falls outside of this definition entirely, as it’s a transparent optimization product designed specifically for AI platforms.

AXP targets LLM bots only (not traditional search crawlers), serves structured, contextualized data to LLMs for comprehension and accuracy, and maintains the same content intent across all versions. The goal is improved AI understanding, not deception.

The content served to the LLM is the same content ultimately reflected to the user, only formatted for how AI actually consumes it. Website content is made more accessible and comprehensible to AI systems without changing the fundamental information or intent.

Follow-up question: Will websites using AXP be penalized by Google or other platforms?

No, websites using AXP will not be penalized by Google or other platforms for multiple reasons:

1. There’s no deceptive intent: AXP improves content clarity versus manipulates it.
2. Traditional search is unaffected: Traditional crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot see the same content as before.
3. AXP is compliant with ToS: Technical optimization for understandability is explicitly allowed by search engines like Google.
4. AXP is AI platform-aligned: AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and others benefit from structured, contextual data.