is it worth targetting non english search engines?

[taj79]

I have a website on indian paintings,sculpture in English.I have put a translator to many languages in my website.I m from India.I know English.I have been mainly targetting google.
But in this forum I came to know that there is a large chunk of non-english net surfers.So which are the non english search engines/directories I should target?What I feel is that many are giving google results.So is it worth targetting non english search engines?
Please guide me.

[heini]

Okay, some basic things you might want to consider:

Non-english searchengines won't index english language sites. There are some search engines operating locally,
by far the majority of search traffic anyhow goes through the international major engines, namely Google, Fast/ATW, Inktomi and Altavista.

Those majors all index content regardless of language.

So the question is not, will they index you but will a site in english be visible in Europe.

To understand this you need to consider two things: First the vast majority of european searches are performed in the language of the searcher, i.e. french users will use terms in french. What's more, they will prefer results in their mothertongue.

Second all search destinations in Europe, be it on portals or at search engines directly give users the option to either search worldwide or in results from their language only, with the local option being the default.

So what does that all mean?
It means if you want to target Europe efficiently it's not primarily the search engines you should be concerned with but languages.
To target European users you need to talk their language.

If however setting up translated versions of your site is not feasible, then offeroing an english version which is well indexed in all international majors is fine. This way you'll be visible to all users not restricting their query to local languages.

To get a feel for the European search landscape take a look here:
[webmasterworld.com...]