August 18, 2008

Rosetta Translation Launches Website Localization Service

If you want to go global or develop your content in other languages, you're likely in need of a good translator. But just copying and pasting text into an online translation page isn't going to do the job. You need human intelligence that knows the culture of the audience you're aiming to reach.

Rosetta Translation is looking to serve that need by launching website localization services. Rosetta defines this service as "process that makes a website accessible, functional and culturally suited to a specific market."

Rosetta's website localization services aren't just about language translation. They will help site owners understand what is offensive in a certain culture or what the typical speed of internet access is in an area.

"The Internet is now being used as a medium for everything from accommodation bookings to research on zymology," says Luke Blackwell, Head of Information Technology at Rosetta's London headquarters, who is also responsible for developing Rosetta's website localisation services. "New uses are added daily and it makes sense for companies to have website visibility and function at the heart of their international marketing strategy."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

VeriSign Now Supports International Domain Names

VeriSign has announced that their SSL certificates will now support International Domain Names (IDN). These domain names display website addresses in local language characters such as Kanji symbols in Japan. This will come as welcome news to those who are looking to globalization marketing efforts or developing a multi-lingual site.

"Internationalized domain names are gaining traction with the introduction of IDN-enabled browsers like Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox," said Michael Lin, vice president of SSL product management at VeriSign. "Providing the latest security protection is a key step toward achieving a globally interconnected Internet that serves linguistically diverse populations. For its part in this effort, VeriSign is pleased to extend the protection of VeriSign SSL Certificates to sites using IDNs."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 17, 2008

SEW Experts: SEO Issues with Global Expansion

When a U.S.-based company expands globally, they typically spend little or no time with their expansion plans overseas. In today's Enterprise Search Marketing column, "SEO Issues with Global Expansion," Aaron Shear explains why that's a mistake. Big business is commonly lost with their overseas Web sites.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 26, 2008

SEW Experts: Global SEO Strategy: Advanced Search for Large Enterprises

Many companies have chosen to expand overseas with the growing global economy. With this, each multinational must develop a search marketing strategy for each new international market, which also fits into a holistic global search strategy. In today's Big Biz column, "Global SEO Strategy: Advanced Search for Large Enterprises," Aaron Shear explains that advanced global SEO requires more than just keyword research, translation, and localization. He offers a primer on key issues to consider when developing global search engine strategies.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

February 1, 2008

SEW Experts: Optimizing the Planet: SEO on a Global Scale

When building an SEO team to provide global services, it's necessary to recruit skilled, multilingual SEO experts -- no easy task. In today's Outsourced column, "Optimizing the Planet: SEO on a Global Scale," William Flaiz shows that the benefits of investment in infrastructure are reaped across both the domestic and international playing fields.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 20, 2007

SEW Experts: Global SEM Growth Leaves U.S. SEOs Behind

Now that search engine marketing has become a global game, the need for translation services for Web sites has never been greater. In today's Search Engine WarGames column, "Global SEM Growth Leaves U.S. SEOs Behind," Kevin Heisler notes with surprise that relatively few SEOs and SEMs leverage language translation.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 14, 2007

SEW Experts: Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1

The search world is expanding. Global players like Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Microsoft are competing to be the single resource for accessing information. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1," Kevin Ryan begins an exploration of global search marketing, with some exclusive comScore data.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 6, 2007

SEW Experts: Machines In Translation: Do MT Engineers Dream of Selectric Sheep? Part 3

What does Google really want to achieve with machine translation? In today's Search Engine WarGames column, "Machines In Translation: Do MT Engineers Dream of Selectric Sheep? - Part 3," Search Engine Watch Executive Editor Kevin Heisler suggest that you may find the stinging answer in that book by Nabokov. More Google android dreams in Part 3 in a series for search marketers with multinational momentum.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2007

SEW Experts: Machines In Translation: Do MT Engineers Dream of Selectric Sheep? Part 2

The battle for search engine supremacy in machine translation rages on. In today's Search Engine WarGames column, "Machines In Translation: Do MT Engineers Dream of Selectric Sheep? Part 2," Search Engine Watch Executive Editor Kevin Heisler discusses globalization, machine translation, and written communication. Part 2 in a series for search marketers with multinational momentum.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

July 12, 2007

Latino Search Market Presents Opportunities

At the recent Search Engine Strategies Latino event in Miami last month, speakers again and again spoke of the ripe opportunity for search marketers in the nascent U.S. Hispanic and Latin American search markets. Yesterday, we shared the experience of Matt Williams, who successfully translated a campaign for the Latino market.

Google's Gonzalo Alonso said the market was poised for growth, and that sentiment was echoed by several other speakers. In today's SearchDay, Grant Crowell outlines some of the opportunities in the Latino search market.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:58 PM | Permalink

July 11, 2007

Can Search Success Translate?

Making a search campaign that's been successful in English work in Spanish can be more difficult than simply translating the same words. Matt Williams, managing partner of search marketing firm Prominent Placement, shares his company's search optimization experience with the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets in today's SearchDay, "Can You Translate a Successful Search Campaign?."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:25 PM | Permalink

May 23, 2007

Creating a Global SEO Strategy

Developing a global SEO strategy is not an easy undertaking – not by a long shot. However, if you have a worldwide presence, or plan to have one in the future, you should be thinking about SEO globally...and sooner rather than later. John Tawadros takes a look at what's involved in today's SearchDay, Is Your SEO Strategy Global?

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:45 PM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

The Accent Is On Search

An interesting article in Pandia about an overlooked area of search - Searching Google for words with accents. The bottom line is that it's difficult and fiddly to do it, and it depends on a number of different factors that the searcher cannot control. Let's take the example (as given) by Pandia for Mexico and México. A search will probably return sites that contain either word, but to force the engine to return hits with the accented version a search for +México will pretty much work (though there may be a few oddities caused by inbound links.

However, results will differ depending on IP address, language of the Google home page being used, and preferred language. Now, this is useful as far as the searcher is concerned, since it should result in rather more accurate results, but it's going to be a concern for search engine marketers, since it makes the idea of being (say) #8 in Google a rather moveable feast, - is it #8 for Google.com users, or for Spanish language users? Still, no-one said that internet searching was supposed to be easy, did they?

Of course, it doesn't help either when we start to look into the results in a little more detail. Searching on Google.co.uk (searching the web, not just the UK) a search for Mexico returns 671,000,000 results, as does mexico (with a lower case). However, searching for México gives me 665,000,000 results, but a search for méxico 6,000,000 less, with 659,000,000. When we get into the insanity of searching for méxico -mexico with a result of 725,000,000 things certainly get a little more confused again. My one crumb of comfort is that searches on Ask.com tend to be rather more stable, but even then, not perfect. All goes to show - don't trust search engine results!

Posted by Phil Bradley at 8:53 AM | Permalink

September 1, 2006

How Google Handles Accented Characters

Last night WebmasterRadio.FM aired a show with Vanessa Fox and Matt Cutts of Google, they talked about so many good things including how Google handles accent characters (see archived MP3 here). Last night, Vanessa posted a more detailed explanation saying that a Mexico will return results for both "Mexico" and "México" and the same is if a searcher enters in México, Google will return results for both "Mexico" and "México." It is clear that the results differ in ranking order, but what makes that order change - well, to me, it is not clear from the post. Vanessa also explains what triggers a different interface language and how to restrict search results with the plus sign operator.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:55 AM | Permalink

August 1, 2006

Site Geolocation Tool Sorts Backlinks By Top Level Domain

SEO Scoop reports on a new tool named Domain Localization. This tool uses the Yahoo link command to bring back a sorted list of your backlinks by linking TLD (top level domain). There are several factors that tell a search engine if you are a country specific web site; your TLD, meta geo tags, language on site, contact us page, the links pointing to your pages and a few other factors. This tool enables you to easily see the percentage of links pointing to you by TLD.

While Search Engine Watch is now hosted in the United Kingdom, the majority of its links are from .com TLDs (72%), 9% from .orgs, 6.6% from .nets, 5.8% from .edu and then 1.5% from .uks. My blog, the Search Engine Roundtable is hosted in the United States, and has 81% of their links from .coms, 5.65% from .orgs, 4.6% from .nets, and only 1.4% from .UK.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:00 AM | Permalink

July 18, 2006

Search Marketing in Latin America

Latin America is a tempting market for search marketers, with more than 80 million users and ever increasing broadband penetration. But this market also poses unique challenges that need to be addressed for campaigns to be successful. A panel of experts discussed the search landscape in Latin America at last week's Search Engine Strategies Latino conference, and guest writer Sara Holoubek has excellent coverage of the session in today's SearchDay article, Search, The South American Way.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:17 AM | Permalink

July 10, 2006

Search Engine Strategies Latino, Miami, Florida - Day One

Day one of the first ever Search Engine Strategies Latino edition is pretty much complete. The networking cocktail is taking place now, there is a Google party tonight and also some Yahoo boat thing. I have managed to cover the Landscape & Tactics tracks, so here is the roundup.

+ The Opportunity: Tapping Into US Hispanics & Latin America Via Search + Search Landscape: US Hispanics + Search Landscape: Latin America + The Challenges Of Search Marketing To US Hispanics & Latin Americans

I also took pictures of the sessions and outside of the hotel, you can see them here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 5:44 PM | Permalink

May 31, 2006

Language Specific SEO Advice

A very well written elaborate (PDF) whitepaper by Huiping Iler explains in great detail what's involved, and most of the difficulties, with search engine rankings outside English. Consider that users are faced with filters, radio buttons and other obstacles during the search process, and you can picture what must be done to establish visibility with your target audience.

Consider the facts pointed out by Iler, such as 60% of searches are performed in languages other than English, English has approximately 500,000 words, compared with French having approximately 300,000 and all forms of Chinese combined characters amount to approximately 50,000. One can surmise the increasing difficulty of optimization with the decrease in available words.

Although the optimization tips are pretty straight forward, special attention is given to detail such as language specific character encoding sets, and examples of what it looks like for users when they're incorrect. Other good advice includes hosting and top-level domain issues for search engines to get your site properly categorized and served in the region of interest.

Posted by Detlev Johnson at 9:03 AM | Permalink

April 21, 2006

Marketing to Hispanics Part II Released

Nacho Hernandez from iHispanic released part II of his Marketing to Hispanics report, the first part we discussed here. I have pulled out some of the highlights of part two, with Nacho's help.

* Search engine optimization is the most popular marketing tactic to reach US Hispanics; more importantly, however, it's likely the most important internet marketing effort because it relies on a pull strategy, based on users' needs, rather than a push strategy that's focused on brand awareness and potential reach.

* Shows a cool chart with a visual presentation of how pull marketing attracts a more targeted market like with the Hispanic audience and is based on persuasion, whereas permission marketing is more about communities, occupying a middle ground in consumer's intent, and push marketing is used more for reach and awareness.

* When it comes to reaching Hispanics, search engine marketing is highly underdeveloped, with Hispanic advertising agencies having ignored search due to a lack of knowledge about the tools and techniques of SEM.

* In part 1, it referred to the language barrier as an important challenge. He mentions that the second-highest hurdle is the lack of tracking marketing results within the Hispanic market. Hispanic businesses and advertising agencies need only make use of web analytics software; and if they were to do so, their survey would not find that 30% of respondents don't target Hispanics because "senior management is not convinced on the ROI."

* Nacho mentions that when it comes to search engines, some believe that there is only one option for targeting Hispanics: Spanish-language search. Instead, marketers should be looking at the bigger picture: Hispanics doing search in any language. He points to "the database of intentions" from John Battelle's book The Search to stress the point that he advertiser doesn't control what the user wants; only the user controls what he or she wants, and that can be done in any language. It's common for the thought process of US Hispanics to take place in English and so they speak in English, or other times to think in Spanish and so speak in Spanish. The same is true of search: The Hispanic user will search in both languages, based on their "desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, subpoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends."

* Nacho says that what keeps him up at night worrying about the US Hispanic and the Latin American markets is: If Latino-focused ad agencies merely add SEM or any other Internet-based programs to their list of services as if it were just an SKU and pretend to know how to implement them-but don't deliver results-clients will rightly be frustrated. As a result, such agencies are damaging the entire industry. SEM requires a full commitment to learn; and it doesn't take a couple of days to pick up, either. To drive results, as with all media, it takes practice and skill. Ad agencies must invest the time and human resources to be able to deliver results. Imagine what happens when a client who allocated $20 million from the marketing budget finds out that an intern is handing its SEM campaign.... A viable option for Hispanic ad agencies is to partner with market leaders, which was the most likely case among those we tracked that were offering search marketing solutions in a professional manner.

The full report can be viewed at http://www.marketingprofs.com/6/hernandez2.asp.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:55 AM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Blog On French Search Industry

Via Xooglers, former Googler Franck Poisson is running a French-language blog that covers the search industry, obviously of interest to anyone watching search and France. Long standing site French search site Abondance is well worth checking out, as well. The new Multilingual Search Blog is another resource French search watchers will also want to visit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:18 AM | Permalink

November 18, 2005

Coverage of of CNET Japan Search Conference

The CNET Japan Fall Innovation Conference is currently underway and Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal is doing his very best to offer coverage of many search-related sesssions. Kudos Loren! Lots of interesting reading. So far he's posted presentations from Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Microsoft, Google and others. Here are direct links to his posts so far:

+ Microsoft’s Marketing Vision

+ Yahoo Japan: Social Media Search

+ Mobile & Local Japan Search

+ Ask Jeeves Search & Web 2.0

+ Blog Session at CNET Japan Search Conference

+ Google Global: Open Source, API, Mission

Posted by Gary Price at 2:26 PM | Permalink

May 17, 2005

Blair "Liar" Linkbomb Highlights Country-Specific Skewing

About a month ago, Google Blogoscoped wrote of a link bomb that pushed UK prime minister Tony Blair's official biography to number one in a search for liar on Google. That is, if you use Google UK. Do the same exact search on Google.com, and the biography currently ranks fifth.

What's going on? It's not a case of having used the "Pages From The UK" option at Google UK to get UK-oriented results. This difference happens when using the default search "The Web" option at Google UK. In short, a search across the entire web at Google UK is not equal to a search across the entire web at Google's flagship Google.com site.

This isn't a Google-specific issue. The liar query underscores a big change that's snuck up on search users of several major search engines over the past year. Search engines have straying more and more into showing different results at the various country-specific versions they operate, even if country-specific results were not requested.

For Search Engine Watch members, I've posted an extended version of this story that looks at how and why these changes have happened, ranging from mirroring and censorship issues to specific ranking differences that are done in hopes of bettering the user experience.

Overall, I understand and can even applaud the desire to try and help users in a particular country get better results. But I think better disclosure that skewing is happening should be done if a user is choosing to search the entire web, when at a country-specific edition of a major search engine.

I'd also like to see all the major search engines ensure that if you go to a particular country-specific edition, regardless of where you are at, you see the same thing.

In other words, everyone who goes to Google UK should see the same thing, regardless of whether they are in the UK or not. The same for those going to Google US (FYI, Google says that's currently the situation).

The above is terms of editorial results. In terms of ads, I also think the search engines should provide options. If you want to see ads targeted at those in particular countries, when at a particular search engine, you should be able to say so. As an American who lives outside the US, I still have an interest in US-targeted ads. I'm hardly the only expat of any country like this.

My extended article on this topics for Search Engine Watch members is here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:51 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2005

Looking At Yahoo's Latin America Move

Yahoo! Buys TeRespondo.com to gain market share in Latin America from Nacho Hernandez at Search Engine Roundtable revisits Yahoo's TeRespondo purchase last week to provide some stats to show why Latin America growth was of interest -- and why he feels it was easier for Yahoo to buy the company than try to steal its distribution partners. He also looks at Google hiring for Brazil and Mexico. Want to discuss? Join Nacho and others in our forum thread, Yahoo! Gains Market Share in Latin America with TeRespondo.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:08 PM | Permalink

February 4, 2005

Search Marketing To The Hispanic Market

Nacho Hernandez, one of our forum moderators and a regular SES speaker, has preached for ages that the Hispanic market is a largely untapped one by search marketers. Gaining Web Site Traction With a Spanish Flare from MediaPost hands out some numbers to back the idea that online marketers need to be tapping into Hispanics. Meanwhile, also considering checking out hispaSEO -- a directory of SEM firms that deal with Spanish language web sites that was started at the end of last year. Also see our forum thread SearchInsider's "Gaining Web Site Traction With a Spanish Flare" to discuss that article, plus our SearchDay article from earlier this year, Search Marketing & the Spanish Speaking Internet.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

September 15, 2004

Web Search in the Hispanic Community

Polling Hispanic Search Users Source: Media Post A good overview of the Hispanic search market. Lots of numbers. iHispanic Marketing Group president Ignacio "Nacho" Hernandez Jr. is quoted throughout the article. Nacho is also moderates the SEW Multilingual Search Markets & Non-US Engines forum.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)