The day Google wiped out the SEO industry from Portuguese SERPs

[Luis Morais]

Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.

I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it...

HAL's shutdown speech, 2001, A Space Odyssey.

===============

How hard is this?

Google starts establishing their services in the Portuguese-speaking world and in an attempt to show the locals (booga-booga-booga, me Google, you Cheeta), wonders to be seen, introduces the term 'SEO' in no other language than English itself in its Portuguese webmaster's help pages.

A divide is created, some go for the motto 'if it is Google, it is good' and start their businesses, buy domain names, send the usual submit-your-site-to-a-million SE's spam, using SEO to describe this newfound speciality sprouting from the rich soil of web design. Others stay in the faith of the old fathers and clients and stick to the well translated and contextualized 'MOB', Marketing e Otimizacao para Buscadores for SEO/SEM, or simply 'Otimizacao para Buscadores' (OB, OB? Hmmm, I really don't think this is going to stick, no pun intended).

Right, then. Everything goes well, until one morning the "SEO" professionals in Brazil and Portugal upon waking for their morning WebCEO free-trial ranking analysis, discover that SEO in Portuguese results is no more!

Instead, from the second results page onwards in Google Brasil and from some point in the first results page onwards in Google Portugal, all one can read is pages and pages of Irish Gaelic results. Éirinn's national anthem, Éirinn's history, Éirinn's latest news and Éirinn's craic. Did I say that we had already selected results in Portuguese for the language results?

Adwords acting as the black sheep of the UI, insisted on displaying ads for Search Engine Optimisation companies though. Some think that the linguistic confusion might have happenend due to a glitch that made the algorithm becoming sentient and self-aware. As such it established that Portugal rumoured in the fogotten past as the 'Port of the Gaelic' was close to the Irish and their language, spoken until nowadays.

See them by yourself (apologies in advance if somehow I confused Irish with other languages):

Google Webmaster's help pages in Portuguese
Google Brazil SERP 2 for the term 'seo' in 'Results in Portuguese'.
Google Portugal SERP 1 for the term 'seo' in 'Results in Portuguese'.

Finally, results from the web in Google Ireland for the word 'seo':

Google Ireland (in Irish) SERP 1 for the term 'seo' in 'Results from the web'.

So here we are, a whole sector of the Internet industry wiped out from our language searches but with the priviledge and honour of having the Irish side-by-side to fill up the void of what was according to Google the name we should call ourselves. Welcome Éirinn, the green of the Brazilian and Portuguese flags is the same as yours!

Welcome, Bem-vindos, Fáilte!

Sean, formerly known as Luis
Editor
Webalorixá

[seobook]

a bunch of Japanese results show up in the global search results from time to time.

bet it happens elsewhere all the time too.

[glengara]

That's odd, on G.ie we used to get a lot of Japanese results, but no Irish ;-)

[Olney]

The Japanese site's are probably mine
I try to get my client's site recognized worldwide (even the pages with Japanese)

[glengara]

I always found the Japanese thing interesting, they rank far higher than is warranted IMO, it's as if G ignores the Japanese script and just "reads "SEO" on page and in anchor text.

[Luis Morais]

Originally Posted by Olney

The Japanese site's are probably mine
I try to get my client's site recognized worldwide (even the pages with Japanese)

He he he, hey Olney you are doing a damn good job then!

[Luis Morais]

Originally Posted by seobook

a bunch of Japanese results show up in the global search results from time to time.

bet it happens elsewhere all the time too.

There is also the possibility most of those results might be in Chinese (apologies in advance, I imagine how annoying it might be for the chinese and the japanese to have their languages confused).

I read somewhere in useit.com that in a few decades we will be outnumbered by asian languages on the web big time, it will be interesting, I guess...