Are slimmed down mobile versions of a canonical page considered cloaking?
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We are developing our mobile site right now and we are using a user agent sniffer to figure out what kind of device the visitor is using. Once the server knows whether it is a desktop or mobile browser it will deliver the appropriate template. We decided to use the same URL for both versions of the page rather than using m.websiteurl.com or www.websiteurl.mobi so that traffic to either version of these pages would register as a visit to the page.
Will search engines consider this cloaking or is mobile "versioning" an acceptable practice? The pages in essence are the same, the mobile version will just leave out extraneous scripts and unnecessary resources to better display on a mobile device.
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I think you'll find this post on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog valuable.
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Thanks Korgo, that is good to know. The question still remains though: If both versions of the page have the same URL and canonical tag, is it cloaking?
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Google has a completely different robot for searching mobile pages
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