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Showing posts from March, 2016

Google to Update Smartphone User-Agent of Googlebot

Googlebot’s renderer evolves over time, the company says, and right now it renders pages more like Chrome than Safari. Changing the smartphone user-agent should have no affect on roughly 99% of sites. The change will only have an affect on sites that specifically looks for a particular Googlebot user-agent string, which is not recommended in the first place. Implementing user-agent sniffing for Googlebot is considered to be a form of cloaking, whereas guidelines state Googlebot should be treated like any other browser. Google’s Fetch and Render tool in Search Console has been updated with the new user-agent string. You’ll know for sure if your site is affected by the user-agent change by running it though that tool. You can also check by going into the Developer Tools on your browser and changing the user-agent string (for example, via Chrome Device Mode). Source URL:  https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-to-update-smartphone-user-agent-of-googlebot/