What should I watch out for if I redirect mobile visitors?

Chris A. from Erie, PA asks:

"I have a server-side script that automatically redirects visitors to a mobile version of a site if they are using a mobile browser. My question is: What are some things to watch out for (if any) when serving different content based on the visitor?"

This video is part of a "Grab Bag" series in which Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, answers questions from webmasters. We're not currently taking new video questions, so your best bet for getting an answer about webmaster-related search issues is to head to our help forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Google
• mobile
• cloaking

[plabrow]

I'm not sure that answers the question, Matt. What Chris may have been getting at (and certainly what I'd like to know) is how do you avoid any penalties in terms of the mobile version of the site being duplicate content? Also, we want the 'normal' version of the website ranked, not the mobile one. How do we avoid that?

[dfor31999]

thank you ..great stuff

Diane

[jdee1221]

Many times said by Google: "We do not penalize double content". If you do not want some part of your site indexed, use robots.txt or search Google about canonical meta tag

[sayweb]

very good

[brlmnd]

great :)