Mobile SEO or Block Crawlers?

[BruceMillard]

We're in the process of launching mobile versions of many of our brand sites and our ecommerce site and one of our partners suggested that we should block crawlers on the mobile view so it doesn't compete for the same keywords as the standard site (We will be automatically redirecting mobile handsets to the mobile site). Does this advice make sense? It seems counterintuitive to me.

[Michael_Martin]

That is absolutely not necessary, especially if you are using the correct mobile DocTypes in your mobile pages.

To further clarify this, provide a mobile XML sitemap http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34648

For usability be sure to use user agent detection to render your mobile site or mobile CSS rendering for smartphone/feature phone users along with an opt out to the desktop site/version.

Hope this helps!