SEO For Multilingual, International & Dynamic Web Site [Archive]

Kate

09-26-2005, 03:05 AM

Hi,
I’m new to the forum but based on past postings I’d like to bounce a few ideas around about non-English search, local domains, local hosting and tracking tags. Quite a big chunk, I admit.

I’m working on a large multi-lingual dynamic website that currently has no URL distinction between languages (ie the French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Swedish, English, etc. sites all point at an identical .com URL www.company.com). Visitors’ locations are detected automatically when they arrive based on IP and they are directed by default to their local site, with a cookie to keep them on that site unless they manually change countries. The effect is that most of the site isn’t crawled at all and the parts that are crawled are picking up only US-English, I assume because the spiders’ IPs are in the US.

This architecture was set up with no regard for SEO and I’ve now been assigned to recommend changes to make the whole site crawlable. One thing to bear in mind is that our business is almost exclusively with people who do not speak English. Also, we have a large amount of traffic coming through partner/affiliate sites and we are using both subdomains and parameters on the query string/in sessions to track that traffic.

Based on all my reading and research, I’d like to see what you think about a few topics. You can’t do my job for me of course, but maybe you can keep me from making glaring errors.

I think we must use local domains for each country, or at least all the major ones we target, to give us the unique URLs we’re looking for and also the ‘local’ weight with search engines. Local hosting is prohibitively complex for us to consider except in some Asian countries where speed is greatly improved, unless it’s going to really help us out with local results. Is a local domain enough?
1. Won’t splitting the site into 30 or so local domains also divide our popularity (PR) since for now all links go to the .com when in the future they will have to go to .fr, .de, .co.jp, etc.?
2. If the automatic location detection on the .com URL is ‘bad’ (which I think you will say it is), here are the alternatives I can think of. A) Send everyone to a country selection page by default. B) Send spiders to the country selection page and send people to their respective countries. C) Continue auto-detection so spiders go to the US site then can follow links to country selection page. Any difference between these 3 for SEO?

I think partners/affiliates need to be on the main domain instead of subdomains. If they are using subdomains, they split popularity between them and possibly pose the ‘duplicate content’ issue, right? (www.partner1.company.fr and www.partner2.company.fr and www.company.fr are identical.) So what is the right way to do this? Stay as we are, use query string parameters on the link that then go into the session, use virtual directory structures to indicate partners, or something else?

Finally, for tracking, we use query string tags on links to track clicks both inside and outside the site. Is this bad practice because search engines see all the different links coming into the same page as unique (because of the tracking tag) but then the page content is identical? (www.company.com/home/master.asp?etag=455332&otag=TH5664 is identical to www.company.com/home/master.asp?etag=455442&otag=YH3164) What’s the alternative for tracking without tags?

Sorry that was so long. I’d appreciate any comments/tips you have on these areas.

Thanks,
Kate

strategicrankings

09-28-2005, 02:55 AM

Hi Kate,

We have had the chance to develop similar sites since we are specialized in seo friendly multilanguage dynamic websites.
Right from the beginning (around beginning 1999) we started targeting this market we decided to adopt a technique that will benefit the user and be spider friendly at the same time.

For any multilanguage dynamic website that we develop we use the 404 trap with a single domain with unlimited languages.
Here are some of the practices that we set in our design procedures.

we use the first parameter from the URl as the language parameter
like this

http:*//www.avismauritius.com/en/locations/
language parameter----------^

the other succeeding parameters are used for content fetching and/or programming stuffs

So if you have a url like this

http:*//www.avismauritius.com/en/locations/

you know that "en" is the language code and that this page is the english version (all data being fetched from back end db)

You can have unlimited language version of the same page for eg.
the french version is here

http:*//www.avismauritius.com/fr/locations/

If a user tries to reach a version that is not enabled, the english version is delivered by default

Growing the site to unlimited no of languages becomes quite easy for the website owner.

They have to get the new language equivalent of the contents recorded in the database and activate the desired language (again in the database).

One nice example is this site http:*//www.whitesandtours.com/ which was initially developed in english and french and to which the web owner added the italian and deutsch version on their own.

If you need further ideas please do not hesitate to pm me

hope this help.

Riley

Kate

09-28-2005, 03:50 AM

Hi Riley,
Thanks for the info. A few things that have made me hesitate about using a directory structure for language:

1. This pushes the whole directory structure down by 1 level. I've read that there is some weight given to pages that are closer to the root rather than far down inside a directory tree.
2. It may be easier for us to build local links to www.companyname.fr than www.companyname.com/fr
3. All things seem to point towards search results going more 'local'. Having a local domain may give us weight in local search engines, like google.fr, which is where our searchers are located.

What do you think about those things?

thanks,
Kate

unrelated

09-28-2005, 08:56 AM

How about parking all the country specific domains on the main site? That should alllow the SE's to treat each URL as regional, allow local links to be targeted at the appropriate url and avoid the subdirectory pushing content deeper into the site. I believe, if the domains are parked -not redirected-then you get the best of all worlds.

bill

10-04-2005, 02:01 AM

I run a number of language market specific sites worldwide and would have to say that from my experience I observed markedly improved traffic by switching from a sub-folder structure to local CCTLD sites.

Maintenance wise, on the back end it makes no difference how many languages/domains you have. If you've got a decent hosting plan you can run multiple domains on the same server and use your database or CMS to control everything from behind the scenes.

Don't bother with all of the automatic country selection by IP. It's a waste of time for the most part. If you have properly localized your sites then the Japanese speaking people will find the Japanese site in their SERPs (in Japanese) and end up on the right page anyway. The same goes for the other languages. Just remember that simple translation is not always sufficient. Sometimes it pays to have your material copy-written locally (after translation) to meet the local market needs.

Kate

10-04-2005, 11:06 PM

Bill,
thanks for the input. I'm sure that people coming through serps will find the right pages in their local languages, like you say. How do you handle incoming traffic to the .com though (through links, bookmarks, direct URL entry, etc.), if not automatically detecting country? You send to English language site by default? Or you send to a country selection page? I'm trying to figure out what best practice is. Is there something wrong with automatically detecting country from a search engine perspective?

One other question for you:
Do you find that local hosting makes any difference for rankings? We do host locally for some Asian markets already for speed reasons. Makes a big difference in China. Not sure if that's postivie for SEO too though. What's your experience? Do you find local CCTLD are better than local hosting for SEO?

Kate

bill

10-05-2005, 01:47 AM

How do you handle incoming traffic to the .com though (through links, bookmarks, direct URL entry, etc.), if not automatically detecting country?Just put a prominent link to alternate language/regional versions on the home page. Work it into your design so that these options are visible. That one extra click by your visitor won't thwart them at all.

On the other hand, there's nothing worse than someone's IP detection scheme deciding for me that because my IP is in country X that they're going to redirect me. How do you know what language I speak because of my IP address? I had a heck of a time with this using Google in Japan until they finally seem to have got it right. The silent majority you appease with your IP redirection will come with a vocal minority who will complain about your system, if not to you, in online foura, which can be worse.

A nice compromise might be to use IP detection to more prominently place a language/regional site option on your .com site. If I come to your .com site from Japan then list a link to your Japanese site at the very top of the page.

Is there something wrong with automatically detecting country from a search engine perspective?Not necessarily. Just make sure your redirection doesn't send the spiders off to another site. ;)

Do you find that local hosting makes any difference for rankings? ... Do you find local CCTLD are better than local hosting for SEO?You won't see a difference with the main SEs in terms of ranking. According to Google reps you need to have either local hosting or a CCTLD in order for them to determine whether your site is focused on a local market. Having both is not a requirement. As long as you have one of those then you're set SE-wise. If you find that local hosting is quicker for your customers then by all means use it. (I've hosted my Chinese sites outside China for years with no complaints about speed, and I do fine in the SERPs.)

On the other hand, local CCTLD is not necessary if you have the local hosting in place for many markets. Some Chinese sites do just fine with a .com domain. It really depends on the market. There are some markets where you'd want both local hosting and CCTLD.

Now just to play devil's advocate here...I can show you plenty of examples that break all these rules. I have Chinese sites hosted in the US with .com domains and they do just fine in the SERPs. The only leg up you're getting with local hosting and CCTLD is to help the SEs do their jobs. Don't expect any dramatic boost in ranking.

AussieWebmaster

10-05-2005, 05:22 PM

If you are plaing links to the various language version I would try and avoid having the text links as merely the language in the language... English, Francais etc.
You are much better doing it as the translation of your major keyword into the various languages... give people credit they will notice and then you have a strong text link.

Robert_Charlton

10-05-2005, 09:50 PM

You are much better doing it as the translation of your major keyword into the various languages... give people credit they will notice and then you have a strong text link.

I think this is a good idea for users. I'm not sure, though, that it behaves on international versions of Google as a trans-national text link that confers anchor text reputation. Let me explain...

I've been wrestling with the question of dupe content on English language versions of international sites... in particular on US/.com and UK/.co.uk. Putting together the various answers to questions about this that I got at SES, including some from Matt Cutts, I got the sense that Google is smart enough to make this distinction if you segregate your inbound links by country/TLD. (I'm not quoting Matt... only interpreting what I thought he was saying with regard to my own theories)

What segregating your inbounds means is that you get your inbounds for .de from .de domains... for .it from .it domains... for .co.uk from .com.uk domains... and .com from .coms. I don't think there'd be any "penalty" (bad word, but the easiest here) to link cross-countries, but it might be problematic if you depended on these.

So, this raises the question for me of whether a French language link from a .com site to a .fr site will help with anchor text influence on the .fr site. I don't know, but if you follow the above, it makes sense to ask.

Also, what's the situation in obtaining country specific tlds? I thought in some cases you were required to host in those countries to use them?

Kate

10-05-2005, 10:15 PM

My understanding is the same as what Bill said earlier: Either local TLD or local hosting will make the site be counted as 'local' by search engines. I've done some testing on competitive keywords in several European markets and it does seem that having local hosting or local domain get sites counted as local. I'm running a test now to try to figure out more precisely if one is weighted over the other with identical pages in all possible configurations of local hosting and local domain vs external hosting and .com domains. I'll let you know the results once all the pages have been crawled.

All that to say, my vote is that a link from a .com hosted in France is counted the same as a link from a .fr hosted anywhere. I'd love to hear anyone else's opinions on this since my theory is driving the internal linking strategy I'm using around the nebula of sites I'm working on. That is to say, each site has 15 to 25 language versions, and I link between them in local language rings (all the .fr sites link to each other, as do all the .com sites and all the .co.jp sites). Sound like the correct strategy?

What countries do you think need local hosting for a local tld? I know only of Japan, which has very strict rules governing .co.jp domains but I'm not sure if that includes local hosting. Bill can certainly tell us. .jp TLDs are much easier to get, but I'm not sure if those count as 'local' for the search engines. No other countries where we operate have any such local hosting rules.

Kate

bill

10-06-2005, 01:33 AM

So, this raises the question for me of whether a French language link from a .com site to a .fr site will help with anchor text influence on the .fr site. I don't know, but if you follow the above, it makes sense to ask. That's a very interesting way of looking at it. It would be interesting to hear whether anyone has tested that out. Segregating inbounds for English sites makes a lot of sense, but you may be taking it too far with other languages. I'd argue that there would be value from a Japanese language link on a .com site to one on a .jp site.

What countries do you think need local hosting for a local tld? I know only of Japan, which has very strict rules governing .co.jp domains but I'm not sure if that includes local hosting.No local hosting is required in Japan. The .co.jp names require a registered company in Japan, but you don't have to host here. I can't think of any CCTLD that requires local hosting, but I have heard of them.

.jp TLDs are much easier to get, but I'm not sure if those count as 'local' for the search engines..jp names certainly are considered local. All other .jp variations like .co.jp are subordinate to that top level, so if they aren't local then none of the rest are either. ;) It's just like .cn and .in names. A lot of Asian countries are opening up their TLD and foregoing a lot of the draconian regulations that stifled their growth for years. Just because they're easier to get doesn't mean they don't count. ;)

Robert_Charlton

10-06-2005, 03:10 AM

All that to say, my vote is that a link from a .com hosted in France is counted the same as a link from a .fr hosted anywhere.

That could well be. Essentially, I'm thinking, you want to keep your links country-related to your sites. If a .com hosted in France would be considered local by Google France, then a link to your French language site ought to confer credit. What I think is important here... and, understand, this is theory, albeit based on some research... is to keep the inbound links to .co.uk and to .com/US separated by country origin.

I'd love to hear anyone else's opinions on this since my theory is driving the internal linking strategy I'm using around the nebula of sites I'm working on. That is to say, each site has 15 to 25 language versions, and I link between them in local language rings (all the .fr sites link to each other, as do all the .com sites and all the .co.jp sites). Sound like the correct strategy?

I think this sounds like a bad strategy. A "nebula of sites" sounds like what Google might see as an artificial linking network, and is probably easily detected. The word "nebula" suggests that the boundaries are visible if you have a wide enough overview (which Google does). If you have enough inbounds from enough other unrelated sites in addition, the edges of this nebula might get fuzzy enough on a web map that it won't be noticeable... but everything from dns hosting to web hosting to the timing of your link acquisition is detectable, and you've probably already left a trail of connections without knowing it.

For the same reason, you don't want to link to your .co.uk and your .com English language sites from the same little linking network. This is one of the reasons it's much cleaner to keep the inbound sources separated by country.

Kate

10-06-2005, 05:59 AM

I didn't mean to imply spam by "nebula". I'm actually working on optimizing a group of sites, each belonging to a single company, but all the companies are within the same legal structure (like a parent company with several child companies). The sites already link to each other, but in a very haphazard manner. I'm planning to link the local tld to each other (like company1.fr links to company2.fr and company3.fr) and leave the .coms links to each other too. Then each .com will link to it's own company's local tld (like company1.com links to company1.fr and company1.co.jp). It seems pretty logical and user friendly to me, and I hope search engines aren't going to punish that.

If that's the wrong way to go, what do you suggest? This strategy segregates internal links by country, like you recommended.

We have lots of external links already to the .com sites, but since we've just parked the local tlds on the .com for now, we have very few links to those local tld. Building those external links to country-specific sites (from local sites of course) is something we're just starting to work on. Sounds to me like you'd recommend building more of those external links first, before implementing the internal link changes.

AussieWebmaster

10-06-2005, 11:04 AM

You will see the link from your .com to your .fr when doing a site link check - most of the time remembering that Google is a bit picky in this.... go to Yahoo and it will be there and thus the link is "in general linking terms" seen.

protheus00

10-07-2005, 06:10 AM

I am also working on a very broad european website translated into 17 languages with content for each different market. Currently we are using a main .com website where language selection is done through a splash page. I would like to go with a network of TLD by country with each index page targeting that one market.

As was said in this thread i am a little nervous about cross linking througout this network because of the perceived same class C network linking penalty. Country specific hosting is not an option for us. The main issue is that every language is different and targeting each one should be done seperatly and depending on your content and offerings webmasters should be able to do this withouth fearing retaliation. So far we have started this project slowly by increasing the amount of link to the main page and building links to the existing top level sites.

I guess everyone has a different opinion on this subject and hearing different ideas from people that are actually applying these ideas is very helpfull.

sjachille

10-07-2005, 06:38 AM

Hi Karen,
I read with interest your enquiry concerning your multilingual efforts. I face these issues every day and have a few sites that have been successfully ranking top 20 for a number of years, all multilingual. In fact,

I am based in Italy and as you can expect many websites I follow face these issues every day: I’d like to share some information with you and other members facing similar problems, and by doing so paint a broad picture with some hands on experience.

I started working with travel related sites in 1998 – I am thinking of one particular website we rolled out in Italian and English. A few years down the line the need to implement more languages became imperative so keywords were revised in various languages, the website was translated, content was optimised and links were implemented: The website reached the top of the SERPs within days.

As you can see there was no use of sub domains for each country. I would say that in principle you can achieve good long term rankings using one domain, and I would be in favour of a single website, rich in multi lingual content, rather than a number of smaller ones.

Sante J. Achille
Regional Editor Multilingual-Search.com

protheus00

10-07-2005, 06:47 AM

As you can see there was no use of sub domains for each country. I would say that in principle you can achieve good long term rankings using one domain, and I would be in favour of a single website, rich in multi lingual content, rather than a number of smaller ones.

this is true for site that are new and written with optimisation in mind, if you look at my website eurobet .com this site was never meant for anything but users and it's dynamic nature is hell with search engines, and as such for a site like this one it is best according to everything i know to go with multiple TLD that are country specific and keyword targeted. These will support the main site while SEO changes are implemented which will take several months or maybe even years ...

sjachille

10-07-2005, 07:07 AM

this is true for site that are new and written with optimisation in mind, if you look at my website eurobet .com this site was never meant for anything but users and it's dynamic nature is hell with search engines, and as such for a site like this one it is best according to everything i know to go with multiple TLD that are country specific and keyword targeted. These will support the main site while SEO changes are implemented which will take several months or maybe even years ...

Please allow me to disagree with your comment and your approach. I don’t see a dynamic website any differently from static one in most cases. This is a typical example. In my opinion it is more often than not that dynamic web sites perform very well once the fundamentals have been sorted out – even if the website is multilingual

protheus00

10-07-2005, 07:31 AM

Please allow me to disagree with your comment and your approach. I don’t see a dynamic website any differently from static one in most cases. This is a typical example. In my opinion it is more often than not that dynamic web sites perform very well once the fundamentals have been sorted out – even if the website is multilingual

I can agree with you that fundamentals are very important and they should be sorted out, but let's consider a real world example where you are in a big corporation and the optimisation issues are the least of your employers concerns and where your IT department is not just 2 guys in a backroom. I don't know if you have taken a look at the website i am working with right now but i can assure you that even though i am well versed in the fundamentals it is still very hard to get even a title changed on this site ... And because of this I consider the network approach to be more solid then any other, especially in our industry which is extremely competitive.

Kate

10-11-2005, 10:27 PM

As you can see there was no use of sub domains for each country. I would say that in principle you can achieve good long term rankings using one domain, and I would be in favour of a single website, rich in multi lingual content, rather than a number of smaller ones.

Sante-
Can you tell me why you favour a single .com over local domains? Is it so you can have higher numbers of incoming links with a single domain? Robert argues for segregation of links from Italian sites to .it and Japanese sites to .jp etc. Do you just mix all incoming links together?

How do you direct incoming traffic to the .com? Which language shows by default for visitors and how do they change country?

One final question for you: How do you distinguish one language from the other on the URL if not with a local TLD? Do you use a directory, a subdomain or a query string parameter, and can you explain why you've chosen the method you have?

thanks,
kate

sjachille

10-12-2005, 05:47 AM

Hi Kate,
The way I see It there are many way you can go about this.

With one domain you concentrate all your efforts into one site – here again big sites (in principle) have lots of content and that’s what Search Engines are seeking.

You need not to fear problems related to the language, the Search Engines are “intelligent” and will recognize your content in different languages, you can use the LANG tag to identify different languages in the different areas of your website.

As far as links are concerned a big site is the ideal situation for “deep linking” you can manage your incoming links that will point to the different areas of your website.

Avoid automatic redirects on your home page that offer different content to users. Make it simple, use links that allow users to choose the language of their choice to browse your site.

Hope this helps,

Sante

Kal

10-18-2005, 01:43 AM

My understanding is the same as what Bill said earlier: Either local TLD or local hosting will make the site be counted as 'local' by search engines.

Hi Kate, don't assume this is standard - some search engines have their own unique way of determining site origin. While TLD and hosting can influence this, it's not always the case that both are taken into account. For example, I have a .biz domain with both .com.au and .co.nz TLDs. Even though my .com.au site was obviously local and hosted by an Australian hosting firm, because the server it sat on was based in the U.S., Google treated my site differently to the way it treated .com.au sites that were actually hosted here. So now I simply redirect my local TLDs to my main site using .htaccess.

Another thing to consider is the importance of TLDs not just to your regional audiences, but to regional directories. Some won't accept sites that don't have the matching regional domain extension so IMO it is important to purchase these wherever possible in the countries you are targeting.

Thanks for the great questions, it's prompted some really useful discussion.

AussieWebmaster

10-18-2005, 11:34 AM

It is funny how we reverse engineer things. We all scurried for the dotcom domains in the beginning regardless of where the business was based or if it had international potential - real estate companies, retail outlets that do not ship overseas, etc......

No the grab is for the country specific domains and obviously there are much more of these available then the .coms ... I know guys like Bill Hunt over at IBM covered the bases but many others have not.

sjachille

10-18-2005, 12:40 PM

I have been working multilingual ever since the web was born in 1994. I have never experienced “punishment” because my website was a .it and not a .com

When it comes to ranking, there have been and there still are differences in the regional engines but there have been and will be fluctuations, trends, and changes in the way search engines view our content, as a function of both human perspective and technological development. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it is a procedure I would implement unless there are good reasons for me doing so.

I fully agree with AussieWebmaster that we tend to all go in one direction once someone heads off “that way” – it’s human.

From the user point of view a local domain name sounds more “familiar” and I’d use it with this in mind rather than for ranking purposes.

Sante

bill

10-19-2005, 01:41 AM

I have never experienced “punishment” because my website was a .it and not a .com
I've got similar stories with my Chinese site which is hosted in the US on a .com. It does just fine on Baidu, Google, and all the other Chinese language SEs. There's really no reason for me to change that site's domain so I've left it.

However, for my new sites I have been using local CCTLD names. Anyone who's been around the web for 10 or so years will remember that a lot of the CCTLD names were a real hassle to obtain. Some countries required you to show up in person to present registration materials. There were all sorts of crazy rules and restrictions. I think that was one of the main reasons why everyone went for the .com names. It was simply too difficult and/or too expensive to get a CCTLD.

Take a look at India as an example. When I checked in 2004 before they opened up their second-level domains there were only 6508 .in domains registered. Were do you think the other billion + people got their domains? After they dropped all their red-tape requirements and lowered their prices to reasonable levels over 100,000 .in domains were registered in the first 90 days! I could tell you similar stories about Japan, China and other countries. It's really just recently that you can register these names relatively easily and affordably. As the barriers to ownership of local CCTLDs come down they become increasingly useful to the local populace, and then the SEs. In a lot of cases you need to know the history of the CCTLD use in your target market to make effective SEO use of this.

Kate

10-23-2005, 11:06 PM

I know guys like Bill Hunt over at IBM covered the bases but many others have not.

Funny you should mention Bill Hunt. I was chatting with him at the SES in Stockholm last week and he told me a bit more about the solutions IBM has used for their 30+ language site.

1. They are using .com for all their local sites, but Bill thinks they would rank better if they used local domains. He's raised the issue with Google because he thinks lots of large multi-nationals have similar issues of not being able to host locally or switch to local domains for branding reasons.

2. They have set up each "region" (he gave 'Scandinavia' as an example) on a separate set of servers, but all are hosted in the US. He said this made each region appear as a separate set of sites, so interlinking between regions helps spread popularity and make each site appear as an authority. He said recently he's moved another client from a single IP block to seaparating regions on different IP blocks (same server) and that it has had a positive effect on rankings.

3. Along those same lines, he has changed the contact person in the DNS entries so each region has a separate person to make the sites seem distinct.

I also heard some talk at SES about links from other 'local' sites helping to determine the location of your own site.

Interested to hear anyone's comments on these topics.

Also, aside from ibm.com and weightwatchers.com, does anyone have recommendations of multi-national sites that are doing a good job on SEO?

Kate

AussieWebmaster

10-24-2005, 11:17 AM

Kate now you have mne reaching out to Bill to see if he has noticed anything on the spiders or engines (and let's be specific Google) that shows any use of DNS or other registration info.

tedmasterweb

02-05-2006, 10:38 AM

As I understand the original post and the post I'm replying to, the question is how to make sure search engines find and index multilingual content without suffering any kind of ranking penalty.

I too originally designed a site that displays the language of the first choice in the user's Accept-Language header, if present. Otherwise it displays the "default language" of the site. A session variable was then set as the "preferred language" so that the site would know what language to display on subsequent requests.

Users could switch languages by clicking a flag icon for the desired language. The icon would lead to a utility that would simply update the preferred language variable and then 302 redirect to the original page, and the content would appear in the new language.

Obviously, unless search engines accept cookies, this technique will definitely fail. The search engine might follow the link to change the language, but when the redirect occurs, no cookie is sent from the client and thus, a new session is created and no preferred language variable is found, and the site default language is again displayed = duplicate content.

Using "transparent SID" is also not a desireable option as the session id might end up in the search engine results and opens the door for session highjacking, and if I'm not mistaken, google strips SIDs from URLs while spidering a site (but I could be wrong - maybe I should experiment with this... and check my server logs...)

So, the question then becomes: what URL parameter can we use to specify the language for every request? The options are:

- TLDs
- Subdomains
- Request parameters (subdirectories, query string parameters, or even some sort of marker on the basename of the requested document)

Because my content management system allows for it, I'm going with markers on the basename of the requested document. This seems like the least intrusive option. I'd be interested in hearing the pros and cons of the other options, though, so please keep this thread going.

Here's some info from Google about country-specific TLDs (I think... the language is difficult to understand... is it a typographic error?)
http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html#country

Sincerely and good luck with your project.

Ted Stresen-Reuter

Kate

02-05-2006, 10:32 PM

Ted-
After much research and discussion, we've decided to go with local TLDs for our sites. The reasoning is this:

- I did a lot of research on Google, Yahoo and MSN with our top keywords in several markets, searching on both .com and .localdomain versions of each engine (always using web search). It is very clear that "local" sites are favored on the local versions. For instance: search for "sejours linguistiques" (language travel: one of our top keywords in France) on google.com and then do the same search on google.fr and on google.be. Notice how the Belgian site is at the top on the .be? Notice how the French sites moved up on the .fr? Very interesting. In looking up these sites' hosting location, I found that locally hosted sites moved up as well on local versions of the engine, even without local domains.

- That link you gave to the Google documents says that there are several ways to be considered "local": local TLDs, local hosting, links from other sites that are "local". For us, local hosting wasn't an option in most countries. Too expensive and hard to manage (we're talking 30+ countries here). Local TLDs and links from other "local" sites are much easier.

- It's a lot easier for our local offices to build links directly into the top of the local domain than to try to build links into a more complicated local URL. www.oursite.fr sounds more natural=reputable=French to a French person than fr.oursite.com or www.oursite.com/fr or www.oursite.com/defaultfr.asp or www.oursite.com?country=fr. Different countries are sensitive to this to different degrees, but in some places it's a really important factor in link building.

We haven't yet really worked on internal link building though inside the different sites of our group. For now on each of our different sites, we have a 'change country' link on every page that takes people to a page listing all the different countries where we have sites. However, we have several brands in the group and each brand has it's own set of multi-lingual sites (each now using local domains and this country selector page to get between them). I still haven't really figured out the best way for those brands to link to each other, and am not sure how much difference it would make to try doing as IBM has done, setting each brand up on separate servers/IP blocks so they appear more separate. They have their own products, branding and domains, and entirely different sets of inbound links, but they are all hosted on the same servers.

My best guess so far is that each local site should link to the other local sites, probably from an "About Us" type of page. For instance, the French site for product A would have links to the French sites for products B and C on the About Us page, and the German site for product A would have links to the German sites for products B and C on their About Us page. But not all products have sites for all languages. So, if product B doesn't have an Indonesian site, should the Indonesian product A site link to the .com for product B, or not link to product B at all?

Maybe it doesn't matter much, especially since the sites are sharing servers and thus may very well be considered just one big site with several domains.

Any input on multiple domains sharing IPs/servers versus splitting them up, and interlinkage between products on multi-national sites is most welcome.

thanks,
Kate

Andy AtkinsKruger

02-07-2006, 04:55 AM

Just a quick point in addition that I don't see discussed fully earlier in this thread - but the answers to some of the points you all make relate to language recognition.

Google/MSN/Yahoo all use this (in fact for some languages - they are share the same software provider).

It would be possible - as a search engine - to come across a .fr site in English. So where do they put that...

In addition, some languages are difficult to distinguish one from another and the search engines don't always get it right.

Sante's case with Italian and English is a relatively straightforward split. But English US and English UK is much much more sensitive. So the engines are going to have to use other methods (eg links) to make that distinction. Lots of UK companies use .com not because they can't buy .co.uk but because it 'looks good'. That doesn't mean Google wants them listing in the US pages.

As I've said many times before, always give the search engine the best possible clues you can - which are:-

1. Local domain (in many cases that makes it SO easy)
2. Put in the right language tag (they don't rely on it - but hey it can help them out!)
3. Local links (that's going to make the picture clearer)
4. Don't mix up languages on the same page
5. Don't use IP filtering (a: users don't like this b: you have to know what you're doing to get this right and not screw up)
6. Don't use the site's main home page as a language and location selector (do that somewhere else - maybe on a different domain - if you have to)

And don't forget to use a native-speaker - and not a translator - for the languages because don't forget keywords do NOT translate! :)

AussieWebmaster

02-07-2006, 11:20 AM

The subtleties of language are a bigger hurdle than the actual character and word recognition. We have had content - especially in German - where we get professional linguists and then our people in house all make changes and by the time the content is launched it is nearly unreadable as real language.

Just like American and UK English - words are used in many different ways... Spanish needs at minimum European and South American versions etc.

Working on SEO in the area is fair more difficult than business English!

Kate

02-08-2006, 10:50 PM

If we're going to talk about languages, what do you think about having more than one site in the same language for different countries? Let's avoid English, if we may, and talk about say, German. So if I have a site for Germany and a site for Austria and a site for Swiss-German, each on its own local domain, how different do they have to be to not be considered duplicate content? If the prices are different, the language slightly modified to suit local speech, etc., is that enough, even if it means that 80% of the pages on the three sites are identical to each other? If each site has mostly links from its own country (German site has links from other German sites, Austrian site from other Austrian sites, etc.), does that play into it?

I know you're going to say that I should have local people write the text and I do that already. The fact is that the German written in these places is extremely similar. So can I still have 3 sites? French poses the same problem in several countries in Europe, as does Spanish across Central and South America.

Andy AtkinsKruger

02-09-2006, 05:16 AM

Kate - that's a good question and one I've been asked before :)

Let's assume we're in Austria and using Google.at - if you're pages are very similar in Austria/Germany - then just one of them is going to show up in 'Das Web'. And it's going to be the 'winner' in terms of best optimised/linked page.

The same applies for 'Seiten auf Deutsch' but your .at pages should show in 'Seiten aus Oesterreich'.

So you might not be concerned at all.

If you are concerned because of differential pricing - watch out because Austrians also search in Google.de because they often expect to look for companies in Germany for their needs.

If you are concerned because of contact details - why not put "Auch in Oesterreich" if your Germany pages are showing up.

If your product offering is different in some way - best to rewrite the content anyway...

So the duplication issue - isn't always so problematic as it seems. And you are right the German language - when written - is very similar in Austria/Switzerland/Germany - even if sometimes I can't follow the accent of my Austrian father-in-law!!

The usual problem caused by the duplication filters in cases like this - is political - your team in Austria isn't happy at seeing the German office in the results - but if you're in the results you're ahead anyway - and it may be wiser to 'educate' rather than 'edit' :)

Kate

02-09-2006, 05:28 AM

thanks Andy. This is very helpful. The political waters are indeed fraught with iceburgs.

mdf

02-28-2006, 02:31 PM

Hi

I've got a lot of very interesting information out of this thread, but I still have 2 questions:

1- If you search on google.fr or google.cn from Canada for example, will you get the same results as if you searched in google.fr in France or google.cn in China?

I've always been under the impression that it didn't change the results, you had to be in the country and/or use french or chinese language to get different results. I assume that in the case of Google, they probably have international data centers located in each countries that rank results with slightly adjusted rules depending on the country they are located in, and when you do a request in that country, you end up getting results from that datacenter.

2- If you host a website on a .cn for example, will it be of any help if you don't actually translate the content of the website into Chinese?

This is a big issue for us since we're in the B2B business and we are estabilshing trading communities in asia and middle east countries. The thing is, in B2B, the business language is mostly english, so translating the website in the language of the country might not necessarly even help our users, so we thought of buying TLD for those countries, without necessarly translating the websites.

Kate

02-28-2006, 09:06 PM

For question 1, I have heard rumors of different results on google.fr from France vs. google.fr from another country (always using 'Web' search), but I have not seen any evidence of it. I've done many tests using a remote connection to a machine in France and searching on the same terms from here in HK. I've never seen any difference. I could believe in one though, if it were shown to me.

For question 2, the local domain should help without translation if your customers' search terms are in English. Say you make banana processing machines and you want to sell them to banana processing factories in China. If your customers in China search on "banana", then a site in English on a .cn domain should rank better than an identical site on a .com domain, all other factors being equal (links, site content, etc.)

However, if your customers search for [banana in Chinese; oops seems the forum can't support these characters] "?? ?Ô", your site in English won't appear, regardless of the domain. It all depends what people are searching on. In my experience in China, most searches are in Chinese. The same goes for Taiwan. In Hong Kong, however, there is a generous mix.

A final point is that I know many people would discourage you from making exact duplicates of your site on different domains, in hopes that this will help you rank better locally. Better to localize your site, even if it remains in English, so it is relevant to your Chinese customers. It's hard for me to imagine a site that would be equally appealing to Canadians as it is to the Chinese.

ctudorprice

03-07-2006, 05:55 PM

kate,
fortuitous that you asked all these questions... I'm in a similar spot and need to make some decisions.

It appears that everyone agrees that CCTLDs are important for Google to consider us local to the markets. I'm a bit worried about a .ie and .co.uk site - which would essentially be identical... won't Google consider that to be duplicate content? We had a .com and a .co.uk site many moons ago but dropped the .co.uk because we thought we were being penalized for dup content.

How much does one need to do to avoid the dup content trap? Are titles and meta tags enough to distinguish a .ie from a .co.uk and avoid the duplicate content problem? Or do you have to go further?

mdf

03-07-2006, 06:04 PM

There was a session about duplicate content at SES NY 2006. SEO Roundtable resumed it here (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html) . Taken from there:
Different top level domains: if you own a .com and a.fr, for example, don’t worry about dupe content in this case.

That's a comment from Matt Cutts, the Google guy... Hope that helps you out!

lisarenae0561

03-23-2006, 05:16 PM

Do you do research what are the most used search engines in each country you are targeting (possibly not Google or any of the other main ones, but maybe a search engine only in that country) then optimize your site according to those search engines?

Or do you simply optimize your sites according to Google and just let your sites come up where they may in the local search engine results?

I plan on buying a local domain name like .co.nz and hosting a site on a local host. (Tip: Some hosts claim they are located in a country, but they really aren't, you can check by entering the domain name here to see what country it is actually hosted in:http://www.webconfs.com/website-to-country.php)

Then I got to thinking, hey what if the majority of people that live in that country use a local search engine that I've never even heard of. A search on the internet for country-specific search engines reveals many local ones that I haven't heard of for every country in the world, but absolutely no stats on the usage of each search engine. That information is readily available for U.S. search engine usage, so I'm baffled at why it isn't available for other countries.

So is it important to find out which search engines residents of a particular country prefer to target the market better or is just targeting Google enough?

Lisa
Florida, USA

AussieWebmaster

03-23-2006, 06:18 PM

lisarenae0561

03-24-2006, 03:35 AM

Hi, thanks for your reply. I read through every post in the SEO for Mutilingual, International,... forum, but I did not find the answer I was looking for. It seems that someone else had asked a similar question about Google's search volume in the other countries, but nobody answered the question, so maybe this info isn't known?

Does anybody know of a resource that would have usage stats for search engines in specific countries?

Thanks,
Lisa

AussieWebmaster

03-24-2006, 12:46 PM

Specific to country engine - the traffic numbers are hard to run down.... but you could start here:
http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=4988

Kino

03-30-2006, 07:34 AM

Hi Lisa,

Also worth checking multilingual-search.com (http://www.multilingual-search.com) for stats by country.

AussieWebmaster

03-30-2006, 04:01 PM

Funny I am an editor over there... have to mention them more and get back to submitting more info....

phaeberle

06-04-2008, 09:06 PM

I think this is a good idea for users. I'm not sure, though, that it behaves on international versions of Google as a trans-national text link that confers anchor text reputation. Let me explain...

I've been wrestling with the question of dupe content on English language versions of international sites... in particular on US/.com and UK/.co.uk. Putting together the various answers to questions about this that I got at SES, including some from Matt Cutts, I got the sense that Google is smart enough to make this distinction if you segregate your inbound links by country/TLD. (I'm not quoting Matt... only interpreting what I thought he was saying with regard to my own theories)

What segregating your inbounds means is that you get your inbounds for .de from .de domains... for .it from .it domains... for .co.uk from .com.uk domains... and .com from .coms. I don't think there'd be any "penalty" (bad word, but the easiest here) to link cross-countries, but it might be problematic if you depended on these.

So, this raises the question for me of whether a French language link from a .com site to a .fr site will help with anchor text influence on the .fr site. I don't know, but if you follow the above, it makes sense to ask.

Also, what's the situation in obtaining country specific tlds? I thought in some cases you were required to host in those countries to use them?

I have two scenarios that are somehow related:

First Scenario
I have a myweb.com site that ranks well but myweb.com.pe (for Peru) does not, actually it's parked and pointing to myweb.com

When you look for a keyword in google.com, google.cl or google.es it shows up among the first five sites.
If you do it in google.com.pe it shows in the second page!!!

I was thinking about doing what was said (see quoted post), the problem is, google doesn't like duplicate content.

Any ideas?

Second Scenario
I have another site that works only for Peru. I was thinking on displaying adsense ads if somebody searches from another country, but for that I would need IP geolocation and then again the bots are NOT in Peru.
I think checking for the bots ips is not an option since that might be considered cloaking.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

durdenet

07-10-2008, 09:04 PM

I own a fairly big website spread in 20+ domains, and I've similar doubts.

However, I think many of the info given in this thread are not "road tested" and only theoretical. For real practical purposes are not the best choices.

The claim that "automatic redirection is not user friendly and considered bad by google" can easily be proved wrong. First of all I am happy when a website redirect me to the right page without another click, and this happens 95% of the time, in the 5% of cases in which I'm not happy with it I would do 1 click to correct the issue. The resulting is less total clicks and more user satisfaction. I don't want to hear SINGLE opinions of particular users that don't like it, you should check the majority of users and also what the leaders are doing.
In fact many leaders are happily doing this:
google .com being the main example.
And hotels .com, opodo .com. and many more.

Also opodo and hotels DO cloak their page. this is easily tested by changing your browser useragent with a google's one. In that case there would be no automatic redirection. Is that simple.
If the leaders (I'm in the travel and accomodation business) are using this method why shouldn't my website? what do you think?

The question is not how things are supposed to be in a "dreamworld" (many people here still consider google webmaster guidlines as the bible..) but how in real life you can stand with the competition. And as an example this means detecting with more accuracy google bots etc. By the way, what is the best way? I know there is a commercial program that is the leader but are there also any open source reliable alternatives?

p.s. Tomshardware is trying to implement automatic redirection in this moment (they used to have a splash screen with a map), but it doesn't work in italy and it's been like this for a week.... someone should tell them! :)