Forum Moderators: not2easy
Here is the question:
Will there be negative effects to the .com site (in Google SERPS) if I create a mirror .cn site in the mandarin language and another .ru in Russian?
The sites will be identical except their language, they will link to each other and be hosted on the same VPS.
Earlier this year I moved the Chinese pages and created two new sites. I added 301 redirects to the moved pages. Again no problems and total traffic the same as before.
I also hived off some of the original pages to create another English language site with a mirror site in French.
The GB2312 Chinese site is hosted in China but all others are hosted on the same virtual server as the English language site. Also all sites are registered to me in my Google Account.
I link from the main English site to all the other sites, but I do not link back or interlink at all. I did read somewhere that Google might not appreciate interlinked sites on the same server. This may not be true, but better safe than sorry.
So far no problems, however that's just my experience to date.
I then treat all sites as seperate, get DMOZ entries, and try to get appropriate links to each from other sites.
Just to clarify, I link only once from my English language site to the other sites, and that's on the home page. A link on all pages may be seen by search engines as spammy.
well, if simplified chinese is my nother tongue and I visit a page in english and there is a version in simplified chinese, why should I go to homepage to change language version of the website and navigate back to the landing page i visited first in english?
it is understable that there should be a link on the english landing page to its version in simplified chinese.
Though the core of my content unavoidably has English in it, I make as much of the Web page "furniture" as possible be selected automatically by the user's preferred lanaguage as set in their browser (see documents on "i18n" (internationalisation) "HTTP content negotation" and "Accept-Language") so there is no clicking around for users to do.
The same page just "appears" in the "right" language "automatically" (I have all the "quotes" because of course it's not quite as smooth as that!).
I would have thought that a good CMS could do the same for you. The page is always the same, but the content varies to suit the user, where you have localised versions of the content.
There is an extra wrinkle, however, in that SEs don't usually set an "Accept-Lanaguage" header at all, so in that case I let the site's physical location (NOT the SE's) select the page default, eg my Australian server has a slight Aussie "accent", and my new Beijing server will default to simplified Chinese. If you don't do this, or a couple of other tricks, then SEs may fail to see the pages in anything other than the default language.
Rgds
Damon
well, if simplified chinese is my nother tongue and I visit a page in english and there is a version in simplified chinese, why should I go to homepage to change language version of the website and navigate back to the landing page i visited first in english?
it is understable that there should be a link on the english landing page to its version in simplified chinese.
I agree. On my site, you can flip between languages with just one click. Makes for a better user experience, IMO.
Will there be negative effects to the .com site (in Google SERPS) if I create a mirror .cn site in the mandarin language and another .ru in Russian?
On some search terms, I am the #1 listing in two languages. So, IMO, adding an additional language will not have a negative impact. But, in my case, both languages are on the same TLD.
On my site, you can flip between languages with just one click. Makes for a better user experience, IMO.
I agree, and when I had all the different language pages on one site that is exactly what I did. Best for the user and OK with search engines.
However the pages are now on different sites, and so much interlinking might be seen as spammy by SEs. Perhaps not, but I don't want to take the chance.
However the pages are now on different sites, and so much interlinking might be seen as spammy by SEs. Perhaps not, but I don't want to take the chance.
exactly. this is what probably kicked us out then.
* Do you use sessions/cookies to remember a users language and/or:
* Can you see from the url that you are using a specific language? (like widgets.com/en/widget.html)
* does a search engine only index your default language or does it somehow also reach the other languages sometimes?
* Can you see from the url that you are using a specific language? (like widgets.com/en/widget.html)
* does a search engine only index your default language or does it somehow also reach the other languages sometimes?
no cookies. plain urls as you suggested in the example. and if so, the answer to your latter question is positive
I get round the "SE spiders see your default language" issue by having my local mirrors default to their "local" locale/language in response to an SE/robot request, eg my Australian mirror responds with an "Aussie" accent and my Beijing server should (very new, so not yet proven/tested) respond with a zh_CN accent when spidered.
Rgds
Damon
we have NEVER had any problems with interlinking, and we interlink every single page with the same page on the other language sites. we do use the <html lang="es"> attribute in each site.
we not only interlink with graphic flags, we also interlink using good anchor text where appropriate e.g.
"Click here for Real Estate in ..."
"Clic aquí para Inmobiliarias en ..."
this is very useful for our visitors, so why on earth should any search engine penalise this?
why on earth should any search engine penalise this?
I agree it can be useful for visitors. But I seem to remember that some people have had bad experiences with Google for massive site interlinking, especially if the sites are on the same server.
If I could be certain it wouldn't happen to me, I would consider doing the same.
we have 3 sites each in 3 languages, each with their own local .tld, all hosted on the same server.
so you have:
www.yoursite.com
www.yoursite.jp
www.yoursite.de
all looking the same but in different languages?
yes exactly. because they have the local .tld, they all rank for "pages in country".
they are all on consecutive IPs. the design/structure is identical, but the content is translated.
we have never experienced any problems, and each site ranks well in each local search engine index: google.com, google.de, etc.
hth
