How to change your user_agent so that a website thinks you are a google bot.

Some sites serve different versions to different users, its mostly websites serving different pages to search engine bots. Some websites do this to trick the search engines, this is called cloaking and can get your website de-indexed or penalised.

Some forums allow search engines access, but block human users from seeing the forum, this is to force people to register to there website to see the content they are searching for. I think search engines allow this because you are still serving the same page to humans and search engines, its just that people have to register.

Some websites will serve a "google bot skin" which is lighter on the graphics, its always a good idea to make sure that the same content is being served, such as text content, titles, heading tags etc. Make sure you include your adverts and make everything the same.

Quite often websites will serve a different skin for phone users.

Here is the plugin for firefox to check your websites to make sure you arent breaking googles rules.

To check how google sees your website, click on "Tools > User Agent Switcher > Search Engine Bots > Google

You can also check to see how iphone users see your website or even Internet explorers see your website. (remember that its only checking what the website is designed to serve you) you cant use this for browser compatibility checks.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59/

Can we serve Googlebot a different page with no ads?