1.4 Rendering & JavaScript ✦CriticalVerified
User-agent-based content differences (cloaking risk)
Serving different content based on the user agent is how cloaking happens, even by accident. I make sure Googlebot sees the same page a person does.
What it is
Different content served to Googlebot vs users.
Why it matters
Cloaking is a spam violation and can incur manual action; even unintentional UA-branching is risky.
How to fix it
Serve identical content to crawlers and users (unified rendering).
How to find it on your site
- Fetch the page as Googlebot, for example with URL Inspection or a user-agent switch, and compare it to the normal view.
- Look for content, links or redirects that differ by user agent.
- Remove any user-agent branching that changes the content.
- Use feature detection rather than user-agent sniffing where logic is needed.
Cross-reference to ranking and citation factors
Showing crawlers different content is a spam policy violation and can trigger a manual action. Parity protects both rankings and trust.
Impact
Severe; penalty risk. Direct (spam policy).
Evidence
Cloaking, different content to crawlers vs users, violates spam policies. Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search