Multilingual Sites and Search Engines: Part 1
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The Web has become a truly global medium, with the result that the content on many websites is either not in English, or contains a mixture of English and other languages. How do search engines handle such pages? More importantly, if you have a website that fits that description, how can you be sure that your site will turn up in the search results? This article, the first of two parts, covers these important issues.
One of the characteristics of the global world is its diversity -- cultural, religious, and linguistic. The internationalization and globalism of today's world can be seen on the Web as well. Although the dominant language for Web content is definitely English, a large percentage of websites are written in a human language other than English.
Consider the fact that about 60 to 70 percent of the total global population is poorly educated in English and cannot use it as a language for research and communication. Although it is true that not all of those people are online, they are the ones who will join the Web in the next few years to contribute to the further growth of the Internet. This fact alone implies that there is a vast market for Web content in at least ten more major languages (not to mention the hundreds of small national languages and dialects), which, although not as widespread as English, globally cover millions of people in total. And when this multilingual content exists, the next big question is how to make it retrievable by search engines.
Approaches to Creating Multilingual Sites
Very often websites are in more than one language. One approach to developing and maintaining sites for audiences who speak different languages is to make separate site (and often a separate domain) for each language. This is the general rule for global multinational corporations, who have a primary site (most often in English) and country-specific websites for each country they operate in. This approach requires more resources to create and maintain sites in several languages.
The second possibility is to have one site with versions in different languages, or even one site in which part of the content is in one language and part of it is translated into another one. In this case it is likely that the site will have several languages on the same page. There is nothing wrong with this. What is more, sometimes this is the wisest choice.
For instance, a site dedicated to tourism will often be in one language, but names of places, native dishes, or even some catchy phrases that are typical of the language of the country the site or page is about will be be included. Or think of a language teaching site, where the most logical approach is to have the explanation in one language and examples in the other language. In both cases it is inevitable that you end up with multilingual content on the same page. It is not something to worry about, but you must consider several issues if you want your site to be appropriately included in search results and more easily found by users.
Next: How Do Search Engines Know a Site or Page is Not in English? >>
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