Technical Definition
User-agent is a string identifying the browser or bot making a request. In SEO context: used to identify search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot), target robots.txt rules, and sometimes serve different content. Google's user-agent includes 'Googlebot' and browser version info. Cloaking (serving different content based on user-agent) violates Google guidelines.
Simple Explanation (ELI13)
User-agent is like an ID badge that tells websites what's visiting them. Browsers say 'I'm Chrome on Windows' while Google's crawler says 'I'm Googlebot.' Robots.txt uses user-agents to give different instructions to different crawlers. Showing different content to Googlebot than to real visitors is against Google's rules.
Related Terms
Googlebot, Robots.txt, Cloaking, Crawling
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