Stay organized with collectionsSave and categorize content based on your preferences.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
With the number of smartphone users rapidly rising, we're seeing more and more websites providing
content specifically designed to be browsed on smartphones. Today we are happy to announce thatGooglebot-Mobilenow crawls with a smartphone user-agent in addition to its previous
feature phone user-agents. This is to increase our coverage of smartphone content and to provide a
better search experience for smartphone users.
Here are the main user-agent strings that Googlebot-Mobile now uses:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9
(KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible;
Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
Update October 2013:Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X)
AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25
(compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
Update August 2015:Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS
X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12F70 Safari/600.1.4
(compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
The content crawled by smartphone Googlebot-Mobile will be used primarily to improve the user
experience on mobile search. For example, the new crawler may discover content specifically
optimized to be browsed on smartphones as well as smartphone-specific redirects.
One new feature we're also launching that uses these signals isSkip Redirect for Smartphone-Optimized Pages. When we discover a URL in our search
results that redirects smartphone users to another URL serving smartphone-optimized content, we
change the link target shown in the search results to point directly to the final destination URL.
This removes the extra latency the redirect introduces leading to a saving of 0.5-1 seconds on
average when visiting landing page for such search results.
Update 9 August 2013: If a site uses separate URLs to serve desktop and
smartphone users, and if we discover accuraterel-alternate-mediaannotationslinking the desktop and smartphone pages, our algorithms may change the link target shown in the
search results to point directly to the smartphone page.
Since all Googlebot-Mobile user-agents identify themselves as a specific kind of mobile, pleasetreat each Googlebot-Mobile request as you would a human user with the same phone
user-agent. This, and other guidelines are described in ourprevious blog postand they still apply, except for those referring to smartphones which we are updating today. If
your site has treated Googlebot-Mobile specially based on the fact that it only crawls with
feature phone user-agents, we strongly recommend reviewing this policy and serving the
appropriate content based on the Googlebot-Mobile's user-agent, so that both your feature phone
and smartphone content will be indexed properly.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGooglebot-Mobile now crawls with a smartphone user-agent to better index smartphone content and enhance mobile search results.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle may directly link to smartphone-optimized content in search results, skipping redirects for faster access.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebmasters should treat Googlebot-Mobile requests like those from human users with the corresponding phone user-agent for optimal indexing.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGooglebot-Mobile utilizes the latest smartphone user-agent (as of August 2015) for crawling purposes, ensuring up-to-date content discovery.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eIf websites utilize separate URLs for desktop and smartphone users, using \u003ccode\u003erel-alternate-media\u003c/code\u003e annotations helps Google identify and link to the appropriate mobile content.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Googlebot-Mobile now crawls with smartphone user-agents to improve mobile search experiences and increase coverage of smartphone-specific content. The update includes new user-agent strings for both feature phones and smartphones. A new feature, *Skip Redirect for Smartphone-Optimized Pages*, directly links search results to smartphone-optimized content, bypassing redirects. Websites should serve content based on the specific Googlebot-Mobile user-agent. Also, when the website includes `rel-alternate-media` annotations linking desktop and smartphone pages, algorithms will redirect to the smartphone page.\n"],null,["# Introducing smartphone Googlebot-Mobile\n\nThursday, December 15, 2011\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore).\n\n\nWith the number of smartphone users rapidly rising, we're seeing more and more websites providing\ncontent specifically designed to be browsed on smartphones. Today we are happy to announce that\n`Googlebot-Mobile` now crawls with a smartphone user-agent in addition to its previous\nfeature phone user-agents. This is to increase our coverage of smartphone content and to provide a\nbetter search experience for smartphone users.\n\nHere are the main user-agent strings that Googlebot-Mobile now uses:\n\n- **Feature phones Googlebot-Mobile:**\n - `SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101\n (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)`\n - `DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H16) (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1;\n +https://www.google.com/bot.html)`\n- **Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile:**\n - ~~`Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9\n (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible;\n Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)`~~\n - ~~Update October 2013: `Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X)\n AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25\n (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)\n `~~\n - **Update August 2015** : `Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS\n X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12F70 Safari/600.1.4\n (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)`\n\n\nThe content crawled by smartphone Googlebot-Mobile will be used primarily to improve the user\nexperience on mobile search. For example, the new crawler may discover content specifically\noptimized to be browsed on smartphones as well as smartphone-specific redirects.\n\n\nOne new feature we're also launching that uses these signals is\n*Skip Redirect for Smartphone-Optimized Pages*. When we discover a URL in our search\nresults that redirects smartphone users to another URL serving smartphone-optimized content, we\nchange the link target shown in the search results to point directly to the final destination URL.\nThis removes the extra latency the redirect introduces leading to a saving of 0.5-1 seconds on\naverage when visiting landing page for such search results.\n\n\n**Update 9 August 2013** : If a site uses separate URLs to serve desktop and\nsmartphone users, and if we discover accurate\n[`rel-alternate-media` annotations](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing#annotation-in-sitemaps)\nlinking the desktop and smartphone pages, our algorithms may change the link target shown in the\nsearch results to point directly to the smartphone page.\n\n\nSince all Googlebot-Mobile user-agents identify themselves as a specific kind of mobile, please\n**treat each Googlebot-Mobile request as you would a human user with the same phone\nuser-agent** . This, and other guidelines are described in our\n[previous blog post](/search/blog/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly)\nand they still apply, except for those referring to smartphones which we are updating today. If\nyour site has treated Googlebot-Mobile specially based on the fact that it only crawls with\nfeature phone user-agents, we strongly recommend reviewing this policy and serving the\nappropriate content based on the Googlebot-Mobile's user-agent, so that both your feature phone\nand smartphone content will be indexed properly.\n\n\nIf you have more questions, please ask on our\n[Webmaster Help forums](https://support.google.com/webmasters/community).\n\nPosted by Yoshikiyo Kato, Software Engineer"]]
