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August 8, 2008
Google Offers Guidance on Starting a Multi-Lingual Site
Do the Beijing Olympics have you thinking global? If so, you may be considering whether or not to offer your site content in another language.
Google understands and they have offered up three points worthy of consideration when making the decision to go multilingual.
Site Structure
First, you need to decide if you want to feature other languages because you want to target another country (geo targeting) or because you simply want to reach an audience that speaks a specific language. If geo targeting is the case, then you may want to set up your content on a country-specific TLD (top-level domain, i.e. co.uk).
If you're focused more on just the language, Google has these two tips:
- Put the content of every language in a different subdomain. For our example, you would have en.example.com, de.example.com, and es.example.com.
- Put the content of every language in a different subdirectory. This is easier to handle when updating and maintaining your site. For our example, you would have example.com/en/, example.com/de/, and example.com/es/.
Webmaster Tools for Geo Targeting
In Google's Webmaster Tools, you can set geographic targets for different subdirectories or subdomains, if you choose to host the multilingual content on your original site.
Content Organization
When it comes to organizing your content, Google says straight out of the gate that the same content in two or more languages is not considered duplicate content.
Moving on from there, keep navigation and content on a subdirectory or subdomain to one language. Mixing up the languages could confuse the googlebot.
What are your tips for creating multilingual sites? Share them in the comments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on August 8, 2008 11:22 AM
Comments
andyatkinskruger August 8, 2008 8:25 PM
This is great info, thanks! I've been hosting content for 14 languages, but haven't been placing content into subdomains or folders. Doing that now. Thanks again!
Summum Bonum
Kenneth Stein August 9, 2008 7:40 AM
I agree with the information given about multilingual websites. The problem I have often stumbled over, however, is that the different languages, even for one country, do not have identical pages.
Often, one or two languages have more pages than the rest (due to the cost of translating and maintaining pages in multiple languages), or the contents of the pages differ due to regional differences.
Andrea Rosenbusch August 9, 2008 11:54 AM
I went out and pulled together several tips that would really make this post much more valuable. However, I noticed that you place a "nofollow" tag on the link to my url.
Given that you specifically ask people to provide their tips for creating multilingual sites, do you plan on including a "follow" tag on those comments providing such?
Kenneth Stein August 9, 2008 12:07 PM
You have placed nice information related to multilanguage sites and i want to know some latest info related to multilanguage forum.
Can any body tell me any forum with different languages i.e. same forum content in different languages? For eg. If any one know only French language and because of language barrier he might not be able to communicate with other members in the forum. So, what about those members? At least i think that all forums should have facility of Multi language forums so as remove communication barrier. Most of the time this barrier becomes biggest disadvantage for the good sites. Because the customers may not understand the other languages and so they don't visit your site as any one give suggestions. So, i personally think that forums must remove the communication barrier as quick as possible. Do you agree?
Marketraise
Marketraise August 11, 2008 7:14 AM
What about translating English content into another language, but still keeping the navigation bar and design in English.
Is it still important to create the subdomain?
scott August 20, 2008 10:05 AM
Thanks for the information. I am thinking to start multi-language page to different languages.
Justin June 22, 2009 2:21 AM
Can anyone let me know if this would mean having duplicate contents? Say if someone translate my page and then set up their own website/page by translating mine into spanish. Will this affect my main english site/page?
Judy December 18, 2009 1:28 AM
From long experience of this - it is much better to use local country domains than subdomains or folders.
As far as the Googlebot is concerned, you make the point that mixing languages can be confusing - but you talk about keeping languages on subdomains and folders specific to one language.
The most important thing is that the page (URL) has only one language as the language detection system which the search engines use when indexing the pages can only select one language per page because it's using the content to determine what that language is.
You can mix up languages in subdomains or folders (unless you're using those to organise your own content - though that's more a problem of confusing yourself or your users).
And don't assume that a single translated page will do the job - it's rare that that's the best solution.
Oh and don't use auto-translation tools - they just don't work...