: Could changing the download link and screenshots based on user agent be considered cloaking? I sell a software product. I currently detect if the user agent identifies itself as Mac somehow.

@BetL925

I don't think you are risking a cloaking penalty in this case. Cloaking is when you do something different for search engine bots than for regular users. As long as you are treating the bot like the majority of your users, you should be fine.

I am aware of two other high profile download sites that do similar things. If they can do it, you should be able to do it too.

Firefox
www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ changes the download button based on your user agent

Java
java.com/en/download/ has a single button that links to a redirector script. That script redirects different places based on user agent.

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@Shanna517

For usability, you should allow users to download the software for a different OS. For example, because the user has multiple OS and wants the software for a different one, or because the one buying the software is not the one using it.

This could, for example, be done with tabs.

If you offer tabs, the content for both OS is on the same page, and the only job of your user agent detection is to decide which tab should be opened by default for a user.

Then no somewhat sophisticated search engine bot should consider this to be cloaking, because the whole content on that page is accessible by everyone.

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