An often discussed lately geo targeting and IP delivery poses another rather interesting question: how to deal with multi-language countries like Canada or Switzerland?
IP delivery won’t work here as people located on the same territory may speak different languages and interested in the corresponding language versions.
A thread over at Google Groups discusses just the case of targeting both French- and English-speaking citizens of Canada. Two possible Google-friendly solutions would be:
- 301-redirect to either /en/ or /fr/ subdirectory depending on the language of the browser used (the thread discusses a WordPress script that can do this type of redirection). While I am not sure how Google treats this browser-dependent redirection, the solution was confirmed by a Googler;
- Add a generic root page in both the languages and let users choose for themselves. Make sure to add some content to this page and make the links to both language versions accessible by crawlers. It is also possible to add Noindex meta tag to prevent Google from ranking the page but to still allow it to follow the page links.
In both cases it would be wise to include crawlable HTML links to the alternative version to make sure both visitors and human being will find their way.
Another possible (but not in all cases) solution is to use IP delivery depending on the official/ dominant language of the province – e.g. return French version for Quebec – with the option to switch the language to English.
Thanks for the info. I deal with some Spanish Language sites where this info is related.
I usually prefer the browser default language detection over all, it should not be taken as a sort of cloaking due to you are not trying to trick the search engine, but you are working to provide the best content you can to the final user.
You guys rock!
I love your site… great info.
Kudos!
MarciDesign
If permitted,we’ll translate into chinese
Great article, very informative.
Remember that u have to work really hard on linkbuilding from you target country to get link point to /country (ex: /fr/ -should have links from france- )
Great article! I will be dealing with some geo targeting sites soon, so this information was quite helpful. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about the fact that some countries have more than just one language :-)
I have been looking into geo trageting. Anything that makes that ad targeted to a user is good in my opinion. The language barrier never crossed my mind though.
Hi, Thanks for posting !
I do have a question about how does the translations effect my page rank? Will google see it as duplicate content and will reduce my overall rating?
Does having http://www.domain.com and http://www.domain.ca with the same content hurt my rank? Is there a way for me to tell google to search only on the “.com” as the “.ca” is exactly the same?
@Shai, Is content exactly the same? I mean you should probably optimize one site for the “USA” and the other – for “Canada”. Also, verify the sites at Google Webmaster Tools and set geo targeting there. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/whats-most-effective-for-geo-targeting/6920/