View Full Version : Multiple languages, multiple domains?
newtoseo
05-10-2007, 07:38 AM
We currently have a web site under one domain name, translated to five languages.
The question is, what is the best option?
a) one domain name with different languages under it?
b) one domain name for each language?
Thanks
SuperZu
05-10-2007, 12:58 PM
Hi Newtoseo!
I would probably get country specific domains if I could. That way, you more more likely to be listed in those languages. With just a .com doamin you wouldn't be listed for searches with the "search only pages from..." option selected.
I think this kind of choice would also depend on what your web site is about and whether you are looking to geographically target customers/readers. It that is the case, I would definitely get the local domain extension.
newtoseo
05-10-2007, 01:22 PM
Hi SuperZu!
we already have country specific domains registered (not currently used).
We are well positioned for the generaldomain.com in the different languages.
We were wondering the effect of changing each version of the web to each country specific domains (generaldomain.com/english.htm to generaldomain.co.uk, generaldomain.com/german.html to generaldomain.de and so on). Would that improve our positions or not?. Could we dissapear in the listings under generaldomain.com/english.htm for instance?
Many thanks for your answer.
rainborick
05-10-2007, 01:29 PM
The key to deciding whether to have multiple domains for this is if the object is to target by language or by geo-location. These are related, but ultimately independent issues as far as search engines are concerned.
If you're targeting specific countries, then the best choice is multiple domains. All of the major search engines give a great deal of weight to geo-location in their search rankings - even when the user DOES NOT select a country-specific search. The major search engines rely on two factors to determine the geo-location of a website: (1) the presence of a Country Code Top Level Domain Name ('CC TLD", as in 'somesite.co.uk'), or (2) if no CC TLD is present, the physical location of the server that hosts the site based on its IP address. Google says they will also sometimes use information from the domain name registration data, but they do not specify when, and since the others do not use this information I would not rely on it.
Targeting by language is a different issue and multiple languages can be incorporated within a single domain. Content-language is identified both at the server response level and the page level, but I haven't checked to be sure which factor(s) the individual search engines use to identify language. I would think that if you use tools like .htaccess files on Apache-based servers, or use 'http-equiv' <meta> tags to set the Content-Language, it would be accepted by the search engines. The 'lang' attribute on the <html> tag might also be accepted. I would try doing site-specific searches for "content language' or 'language search' on each of the major search engines' webmaster help areas. Good luck!
Maybe this helps you. Taken from Google "Webmaster Help Center" (Now this page is offline)
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Why isn't my site returning when I search for results from a particular country?
While all sites in our index return for searches restricted to "the web," we draw on a relevant subset of sites for each country restrict. Our crawlers identify the country that corresponds to a site by factors such as the physical location at which the site is hosted, the site's IP address, and its domain restrict.
That said, your site's domain doesn't need to match the country domain for which you'd like it to return. It's also important to keep in mind that our crawlers don't index duplicate content, so creating identical sites at several domains will likely not result in their returning for many country restricts. If you do create duplicate domains, we suggest using a robots.txt file to block our crawler from accessing all but your preferred one. To learn more about robots.txt files, please see our detailed instructions for blocking pages from Googlebot.
If you feel that we're incorrectly detecting the location of your site, please your site's IP address and the physical location at which it's hosted.
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The parts in bold , I would like to think using logic expressions that are applied with an OR expression.
true OR false = True
true AND false = false
But I notice that canonicalization is ahot issue here.
What happen when someone search?
www.domain.[country]
domain.[country]
You have to strengh the redirection only with 301 and not fall in a loop between domains..
AussieWebmaster
11-16-2007, 12:40 PM
Yes country extensions are good... but for languages like Spanish you have a bunch of countries to add...
We buy all the domain extensions we can.... and then can have them point to the site in the appropriate language.... you can also do subdomains by language spanish.domain.com and then point all spanish country extensions to that