Implications of OS-Targeting?

[NickM]

I have a website that I would love to be able to redirect homepage visitors based on their operating system. Download.cnet.com does this now and they seem to rank well.

So basically, if you have a Mac and click on the homepage from Google, you are automatically redirected to the Mac downloads page.

What are the SEO implications of doing this? It could lead to much higher conversions and happier visitors, but what do the search engines think of redirecting a homepage?

What other implications/consequences am I not thinking about?

[GregW]

I don't like the idea of redirecting poker website homepages based on a user's OS generally, maybe I don't have the same ideas as you though for what you plan on doing though. I think the only compelling reason to redirect is if the visitor has come to download software of some sort. If you just want to guide Mac users or whatever in the right direction, redirecting seems a little extreme.

If you just want to display certain content/ads to Mac users I think it's a far friendlier way to not redirect entire pages. Just display (or not display) the content to users based on their OS. For example, just include text box links at the top of a page saying "I see you are using a Mac. X room is not compatible with your OS, so try X room.".

IMO that would work well for conversions too and be "safer" for SEO (Google wont be forced to look at one page over another, they just wont/will see an extra line of text here and there).

Apologies if I've gone off on a tangent or not really understood your question here. You've certainly motivated me to dig up my old OS detecting PHP though and start using it again.

[NickM]

I think the only compelling reason to redirect is if the visitor has come to download software of some sort.

For the purposes of this thread, let's say the above statement is true.

[CK]

I'm not techie but couldnt you get a programmer to help you with targetting the user based on OS? Ask Eric (mewsiclover) or Mike. Only two I could think of that could create something like that if it's possible. I think it would be alot better than redirecting users.

[GregW]

If the other page would be entirely focused on a different OS and useless then I guess it definitely makes sense to redirect the whole page for both usability and conversions. Although...

The way I've always though of googlebot (or whatever it is that crawls you site) is like a US based bot that probably sticks with one OS and crawls and indexes everything it sees just based on its US IP and whatever OS it uses, so it wouldn't index different variations of the same url, only one. So whichever page it got redirected to when it visits your site it would index that and not the other. Obviously this is just my theory though and Mr. Martinez will really know what really happens.

My guess is that if you have two entirely different pages for the same URL where Macs see one and PCs the other, one will end up not getting indexed and essentially "wasted".

[NickM]

I'm not familar with geo-targeting, but is there a difference between geotargeting content and redirecting to a new page depending on a criteria of the visitor? (Assuming the entire page's content would be geotargeted)

Would it just be better to OS-target a section at the top of the homepage that says something like:

Here are the best Windows downloads: (for PC users)
or
Here are the best Mac downloads: (for mac users)
etc...

This would create a section of the page that shows different content based on what OS the visitor is using, but keeps the rest of the page content the same.

What happens if you geotarget to show an entirely new page of content depending on the visitor's OS?

What does the spider actually see when you are geo/OS/whatever-targeting users?

Forgive me if these are stupid questions, but I really don't understand a lot of the basics of geo/OS-targeting and its effect on what spiders see.

[GregW]

Would it just be better to OS-target a section at the top of the homepage that says something like:

Here are the best Windows downloads: (for PC users)
or
Here are the best Mac downloads: (for mac users)
etc...

This would create a section of the page that shows different content based on what OS the visitor is using, but keeps the rest of the page content the same.

That's exactly what I would do. I think it would be best for usability and SEO.

What happens if you geotarget to show an entirely new page of content depending on the visitor's OS?

What does the spider actually see when you are geo/OS/whatever-targeting users?

Forgive me if these are stupid questions, but I really don't understand a lot of the basics of geo/OS-targeting and its effect on what spiders see.

My theory is that the spider is using a certain OS and that doesn't change. So if it's using Vista, then when it visits your homepage it will see the content for Windows users. It won't see the content that Mac users see, so the Mac OS content won't get indexed.

That's the way I've always thought of it. Same thing for geotargeting in that the spider has a US IP so it just sees US content and wont be able to see or index content geotargeted to other countries.

I don't think that it would be bad for SEO if you redirected whole pages. It's just that surely Google cannot index two different pages for the same URL, so only 1 OS-targeted page would get indexed, whichever one it may be.

[GregW]

FWIW I think this shows that the googlebot spider is US-based: Verifying Googlebot - Webmaster Tools Help. If you check the IP it's from New York.

So I guess you could just think of Google as just another US visitor when it views your site and indexes all that it sees.

[pokeragain]

So I guess you could just think of Google as just another US visitor when it views your site and indexes all that it sees.

Not exactly; this is why there are cloakers, and this is why spider have anti-cloaking measures.