Google Wireless Transcoder

[Umbra]

I noticed this user agent in our logs:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Google Wireless Transcoder;)

It came from IPs 216.239.38.136 and 216.239.58.136

That does shed any light on this thread [webmasterworld.com] and this thread [webmasterworld.com]? Has Google decided to help webmasters identify some of the mysterious hits from its IP ranges?

[Pfui]

I'm not at my usual machine so I'm without notes and log access but your Transcoder sighting may relate to the info I noted here [webmasterworld.com], in #3. In a nutshell (emphasis mine):

"Google Web Search on mobile phones allows users to search all the content in the Google index for desktop web browsers. Because this content isn't written specifically for mobile phones and devices and thus might not display properly, Google automatically translates (or "transcodes") these pages by analyzing the original HTML code and converting it to a mobile-ready format."

In the remainder of that excerpt, if you didn't want your site essentially rewritten, you had to opt out [google.com] via e-mail. Perhaps the "Google Wireless Transcoder" may provide an easier way out? (You just block it.)

Aside: Interestingly. the string ends with a semi-colon immediately preceding a close paren. That's long been a tip-off vis-a-vis bot UAs.

Thing is -- did it ask for robots.txt?

[Umbra]

Pfui,

Thanks for pointing out that thread... I wonder what's the relationship between Google WAP Proxy, Google Mobile and Google Wireless Transcoder?

In our case, Google Wireless Transcoder did not ask for robots.txt. Instead, its behaviour was like a person using an outdated browser (ie., it did not hit pages which are only accessible with a modern Javascript-enabled browser, but it did submit POST forms).

No images requests from that UA. Image requests DID came from the same IP but with no user agent and no referrer.