Will Google see this as cloaking?

[realmaverick]

I am now convinced, that some javascript code in my source, is effecting my ranking abilities and adsense earnings.

We had a html/php website and IPB forum as the forum software. 2 years ago, we decided to develop the website inside of IPB. So that we had a proper, unified system.

The designs were identical. Pixel for pixel. But Adsense earnings halved over night, followed by drops in traffic and a seemingly stuck traffic since. Prior, traffic was growing rapidly.

Source code was the only difference. Titles, URL's, design, were all identical.

Inside the source code, it references IPB over and over, inside a piece of javascript. I believe this is indicating to Google that the pages are forum pages BUT it expects a discussion and what it actually gets, is a gallery. Or other pages with very little textual content. I can't imagine how much this must confuse the search engine?

Is it really so crazy to believe this could be an issue?

What I wanted to do, was if the user agent matches Google, then prevent the javascript snippet from being printed.

Would that REALLY be so bad? Would they consider it cloaking? Would an automated system pick it up?

Changing the code would be another option, but it would involve a LOT of work and make upgrading the software a nightmare. It's really not practical.

Any advice would be appreciated. It's driving me literally crazy.