Language relevance in Google? Or maybe metatags?

I've found that English pages are listed above our Spanish pages

[turk182]

I've found that English web pages about the same topic and with lowest PR than our site pages (in Spanish) are listed above when you search in Google.

The keywords I'm searching for are "language insensitive" (they are brand and model names), the word density is about the same in my page and the pages I'm competing against, and I've got better PR. Any of the keywords appear in the domain names and the page title is about the same in all pages.

I've only found two possible causes for this: their pages are in English while mine is in Spanish, and they have specific metatags (they use metatags with the name and brand of the product) while I use a generic one. I know Google in almost all cases ignores metas, but I've not found more possible causes.

Comments or help is welcome ;)

[heini]

Hi turk182
I can not say I ever found that to be true. But that does not mean I would totally dismiss the possibility.

Generally the language insensitve terms will bring up more english pages as pages in any other language.
Competition on the english speaking market is almost ever much fiercer than in other markets. English speaking results getting on top thus have to be top optimized.

Still you'll find examples of pages in languages other than english out performing english pages. It's always very very hard to do one on one comparisons between top listings. Nobody knows all the factors involved and how they are weighted.

Nevertheless I see two possibilities why english language pages might have an advantage.

One thing is the way Google and any other engine handles languages. This is an area where still not much has been brought to light. Stemming, theming, discerning topics etc all touch on semantic and linguistic aspects.
Pure speculation from my side here (in the hope somebody might jump in with something intersting) but perhaps Google just does it better for the english language.

A second thought is, localizing and geo targeting seem to be a thing of the future for Google.
Thus giving english language pages a boost in Google.com would seem quite logical. Especialy when the user seems to be a native english speaker, which Google tries to find out by the setting of the search language (as opposed to language of results).

I still envision a Google.us for the future with the option of www searches and US only searches.

Would love to hear other people's experineces here!

[rencke]

I have seen this many times, and indeed, have several non-English sites of my own that outrank my English site for the same keyword phrase containing a brand name. I have found the following factors that seem to influence this (other than PR):

1. The title. Is it *exactly* the same? There is a big difference between Kwd1, Kwd2, Fluff, Fluff and just Kwd1, Kwd2. Keyword weight seems to be important here.

2. If it is exactly the same, then look at the relative weight of the keyword in the text that Google shows. If the number of times that Google shows the keyword in bold is also the same between the sites, then read each page carefully and note the number of times the keyword is there. (Or use the keyword density analyser at SearchengineWorld.com)

3. If it is still the same between the sites, compare the texts for inbound links to the sites.

I'm pretty sure that you will find the answer in one of these.