The number of people browsing the Web through their mobile phones is increasing exponentially. Due to the limited screen size of such pocketable devices, a lot of webmasters generate mobile versions of their sites to enhance the user experience. However, this leaves many wondering if there are any potentially adverse effects when redirecting mobile visitors. Google’s Matt Cutts gives a soothing answer in this video.

Essentially, he sees no conflict between the GogleBot and mobile redirection, as they are two entirely different matters. Webmasters do not have to do anything special to their robots.txt file in order to ensure that the crawler will find the full version. This is already the default behavior. If anything, they should just treat the crawler as they would a regular visitor (that is, a desktop user with full browser) and let it do its job. Such would enable a thorough index of the entire site for proper search results ranking.

Server-side scripts that detect a request from a mobile browser will not affect the GoogleBot at all. The crawler will not experience any type of cloaking of the regular content just because of this redirection. It is only the end-user who will see the site in its phone-optimized format.

Video Link:
What should I watch out for if I redirect mobile visitors? –