Non English Web Searching & SE Language Tools

[Suranga]

Hi All :)

Just Wanted to clarify few things on Non English Web Searches. I would appreciate if any one can share the knowledge or suggest any info source on the followings

1.Search Volume
Out of total web searching in the word, what is the split of searches in English and in other languages (non English)..??

2.Sponsored Ads & Non English Searches
Do Google or Overture ads which are created in English, appear for the keywords searched in another language..??

3.Restricting the search result thru SE Language Tools
If the answer for the 2nd question is YES, what if the searchers restrict the result thru SE language tools, only to a specified non-english language..??(Does this restriction apply only for natural results..??)

Thnx & Rgds

-Suranga- :p

[webcertain]

Hi Suranga,

1.Search Volume

To give an idea, internetworldstats' Top ten languages in the world (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) shows that English is the language of a bit more than a third of all internet users.

2.Sponsored Ads & Non English Searches
3.Restricting the search result thru SE Language Tools

It's all down to your settings:
Adwords: You can have one account with campaigns targeting several countires.. When you create a campaign, you have to select language and country.
Overture: Account per country, you can use whichever language you want (tested :) ) but it will only target the country of the account.
Cheers,
Johann

[Suranga]

Thanks Johann

Let me further explain my 2nd question. :confused:

If I create a PPC ad in english (keyword/s: Web usage Stats, for example) and target it to Japan, and if a visitor who is in Japan types the same keyword in Japanese (surfing the web in Japanese), will my ad appear as a sponsored ad.

If "yes", what if, he restricts the SERP only to Japanese Language..??

Hope its clear now :)

Rgds

-Suranga-

[webcertain]

Hi Suranga,
If you are bidding on web usage stats, your ad will only come up for searches with these words (exact, phrase or broad..) but adwords won't translate it for you.. Only the broad matches (keyword in any combination and with other words + expanded broad matches) will vary with your selection of language..
Have a go with Adwords keyword tool (https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordSandbox), you can change languages and countries..
Cheers,
Johann

[Suranga]

Johann

If I select the Japanese language when creating the campaign, but create the ad in English in the back office, will Adwords translate it to the language I selected ?

Suranga

[webcertain]

No it won't, your ad is always showing up as you've set it up (otherwise imagine the endless debate on the quality of the translation, and the work involved for Adwords..).

[GlobalSEO]

Hi Suranga,

Here are a few answers for you…

Search Volume – I have heard Google and Yahoo! at the conferences mention that 40 – 60% of their total search volume is in a language other than English.

English created sponsored ads appearing in non-English searches – they do not appear. If you use the Japanese character version of a keyword it does not map to the English language version. Your example, “web usage stats” – if the user in Japan types in the Japanese language equivalent, your ad would not show up. However, if a Japanese searcher searched on that phrase in English and you do not have Japan geo restricted, your ad would show up.

You asked about entering the English into the backend and it appearing in Japanese on the front end… no, there is no translation. You would not want that level of machine translation of your ads. There are enough very poorly translated ads running now, spend the time to make it as compelling and action oriented as possible.

Language Restrictions via the SE language tools – at SES in London, I believe ComScore, gave a stat that 90% of the searches done within the various European markets are done using the language filter. Meaning, those in Europe prefer to have searches done in their local languages. Once they make this choice the first time it becomes the default. In terms of paid, only Japanese language paid will be returned when a search restricted to Japanese language only.

[AussieWebmaster]

No it won't, your ad is always showing up as you've set it up (otherwise imagine the endless debate on the quality of the translation, and the work involved for Adwords..). Adwords is actually looking to partner with a few select translation companies skilled in PPC to further push into Europe this year.

[AussieWebmaster]

You can use English as part of your foreign language PPC. What you want to do is set the English terms just for the country - in your case Japan - so you have that covered if anyone is using the local Google in Japan but searching in English.... the benefit is the terms will be cheaper and in your market area.

Next you need to have your site in Japanese or whatever language you are looking to market into. Even if you have the ads translated you cannot then send them to an English site. So whoever does your site translation hsould be able to translate say 40 keywords and a dozen or so ads.
I have recently used UniversalEngine and there are others out there. It works out to be part of the budget for rolling out a site in a foreign language - just as you may outsource design etc. you look at this as the same thing.
You will make the money back by being targeted and that will improve the ROI... best of luck and smart move getting into the international market in front of your competition.

[Andy AtkinsKruger]

The idea of letting a translation company loose on an existing Adwords campaign sends shivers down my spine.

An Adwords campaign needs to be crafted to meet the local requirements - not produced through a translation mill that isn't looking at conversion.

Just to give an example from our own experience - translate 'temporary building' into French, German, and Dutch, to take just three varied European languages:

- French = possible to translate, resulting term is used.
- German = difficult translation resulting in a long term - and the resulting translation is not used in the market. (The term which is used has a completely different etymology - and 11 different spellings of it are heavily used).
- Dutch = possible to translate into 12 different varieties, several of which used.

How would a translation company deal with this?

Suranga, Japanese because of the distance linguistically - use of different characters makes it near impossible to deal with this straightforwardly. Japanese - English is chalk and cheese - with the Japanese having different character sets (hiragana & katakana) even within the language as you probably already know well.

But in the European language context where largely the same character set is used (Latin), it is quite possible that your term may exist in English, within the language, and will therefore show up your ad. This is less clear with 'web usage stats' - but you'll find some use of terms such as 'web analytics' which have effectively become 'French'.

So if you search www.google.fr with 'web analytics' in 'pages francophones' you'll see both French and English results - and a whole stack of not terribly well targeted adwords (mostly presenting in English). Which suggests there may be an opportunity to target English terms in French, for example....

[AussieWebmaster]

The idea of letting a translation company loose on an existing Adwords campaign sends shivers down my spine.

An Adwords campaign needs to be crafted to meet the local requirements - not produced through a translation mill that isn't looking at conversion.

Just to give an example from our own experience - translate 'temporary building' into French, German, and Dutch, to take just three varied European languages:

- French = possible to translate, resulting term is used.
- German = difficult translation resulting in a long term - and the resulting translation is not used in the market. (The term which is used has a completely different etymology - and 11 different spellings of it are heavily used).
- Dutch = possible to translate into 12 different varieties, several of which used.

How would a translation company deal with this?

Suranga, Japanese because of the distance linguistically - use of different characters makes it near impossible to deal with this straightforwardly. Japanese - English is chalk and cheese - with the Japanese having different character sets (hiragana & katakana) even within the language as you probably already know well.

But in the European language context where largely the same character set is used (Latin), it is quite possible that your term may exist in English, within the language, and will therefore show up your ad. This is less clear with 'web usage stats' - but you'll find some use of terms such as 'web analytics' which have effectively become 'French'.

So if you search www.google.fr (http://www.google.fr/) with 'web analytics' in 'pages francophones' you'll see both French and English results - and a whole stack of not terribly well targeted adwords (mostly presenting in English). Which suggests there may be an opportunity to target English terms in French, for example....
I agree that many stock translation companies lose the nuances of language and for that matter industry... but that is the reason it took us so long to find the company we use... we have a certain number of inhouse native speakers - but their time is too valuable with the customers - so we needed somewhere that could do the initial translations on a high level with native speakers knowledgeable in our area of finance or of a high enough familiarity in finance that it would be very close to our industry.

[Andy AtkinsKruger]

AussieWebmaster, I'm sorry I wasn't very clear in my post - I was referring to Adwords partnering with a translation company - we all do have to use translation sometime but if there is direct industry knowledge involved that helps to sort out the challenges - and I most certainly wasn't having a dig at your approach :o

[AussieWebmaster]

AussieWebmaster, I'm sorry I wasn't very clear in my post - I was referring to Adwords partnering with a translation company - we all do have to use translation sometime but if there is direct industry knowledge involved that helps to sort out the challenges - and I most certainly wasn't having a dig at your approach :o
I didn't think you were having a dig at my approach... and I agree that finding skilled translators with industry knowledge is very difficult - the companies that can develop a solid group of translators with a broad background in various industries will get very rich over the next few years!!!

[Bagira]

Hope you are right Aussie...we at Universal Engine are trying to get rich this way...anyway, Andy, we have many tools at our site that can help you look into the language differences. please check www.universalengine.com and click on tools. we specialize in multi-lingual marketing and translations. besides having a great pool of translators it is important to know specific traditions of the country/language you are targeting as well. that why companies come to us.

[mrgorgeous]

So my problem has not been solved yet..which are the most visited sites in the different countries.

Iam interested in the uk, german and american top sites.
Pls help.

[AussieWebmaster]

So my problem has not been solved yet..which are the most visited sites in the different countries.

Iam interested in the uk, german and american top sites.
Pls help.
Well considering you have posted in two separate threads and neither really asks the same question I guess we need to call on the psychics amongst us.

But to at least point you in the general direction for most traffic based on language - you don't really pick an industry but you can drill down for that somewhat too at www.alexa.com

[Andy AtkinsKruger]

Bagira,

I loved jungle book too - and I like your site - and invite you to visit ours (see profile) - it would appear we compete or at least overlap!

Please private message me if you think you can help us?

We aim to have the major languages all under one roof working for the client because, speaking as qualified linguist, I know and am concerned about the lack of understanding of the dangers of translation. I guess you and Aussiewebmaster know exactly what I mean!