Forum Moderators: open
p.e.
- kaffee.mysite.de
- coffee.mysite.com
They both share the same IP and the same Database. Both are listed at dmoz, yahoo and elsewhere. Both have good positions for many words and phrases. Both sites have content in their own language (including titles, links, navigation etc.). The site is a specialized directoy and some categories are named the same in english and in german (special phrases and words that are "international" and can't be translated).
Now, for some of these categories, where google returns only a small portion of results, both language versions are listed at google. I would like to avoid this - don't want to step into a filter one day. How can i tell google to only show the appropriate local version of my site (search at google.de returns only my .de version and vice versa)? Does google understand the meta language tag or any other language indicator and if so, what's the syntax?
Of the en-gb part, the first two letters come from the code list in ISO 639 and the last two letters come from the code list in ISO 3166.
See also ISO 4217 for codes for representing currency, and then ISO 8601 for formats for date and time.
Google filters for languages only if a user requests Google to do so. A user can restrict results to specific languages either via the advanced search options, or via the settings on the radiobuttons beneath the query box.
If a user does not rstrict the search you would expect Google to return all of your pages, from all languages. That is if Google finds them to be relevant to the query.
There is absolutely no reason why Google should find it being a crime to have pages in more than one language.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, as I said I may have missed your point.
heini, what makes me nervous is that both language versions (the canonical's like described above) are listed for some search phrases. So i'm worried that a competitor could fill a spam report and the google tech team could press the boot button ... two different sites, owned by the same person / company, showing for the same phrases, ...
Imagine the following results for "Widgets":
- Widgets from space - Learn all about our widgets, how to breed them, how to feed them, how to sell them.
[englisch.mywidgetsite.com...]
- Widgets aus dem All - Lernen Sie alles über unsere Widgets; wie man sie züchtet, wie man sie füttert und wie man sie verkauft.
[deutsch.mywidgetsite.de...]
The question is if there's a way to tell google to only return the second listing if someone searches at google.de and the first listing if someone searches at google.com... - without user choice.
Or am i too worried?
Mmmm....YES!
If there ever was a legitimate reason to have more than one result in a serp than that's different languages.
Apart from that not even Google would think of forbidding a person owning more than one site in the same topical area.
What I would do is interlinking the subdomains heavily - exactly like you would do if the pages weren't seperated by subdomains. Good, solid, themed interlinking: good for your users, good for Google.
No reason at all to hide anything.
We had a bilingual site at .com, but have just split off all the German pages to .de making 2 sites in 2 languages. There is no longer a trace of German on the .com except links pointing German language web users in that direction, and the German site has no English, just links to the .com site for those who want to read English and have somehow stumbled upon a German site.
The idea was that German search engines are biased towards .de sites (or am I wrong), so to attract more German customers we have made the new site.
Hope that really is OK. I can't for the life of me see why not. And it's unlikely that the 2 sites will come up together in a search beacause they are in different languages. If you're searching for "Beer" you should not get our German "Bier" site coming up.
(Beer is just an example. We like to drink it, but don't sell it )
You should in case you interlink the sites. But again, I don't see any problems with that approach whatsoever.
