When is Google to distinguish between 'n' and 'ñ'?

spanish users

[dirson]

Hello.

Spanish users have a problem when searching a name containing 'ñ'. For instance, there are the same results if you search 'año' or 'ano'. But they are different words.

When is Google to solve this?

[dario]

I think thats not a problem, coz if you dont have a spanish keyboard and u wanna search año, the only think u can do is search 'ano'
I think that more than a problem is something positive.

[BigDave]

A lesson my Junior High Science teacher learned to her embarassment. She mentioned that we were going on a field trip to "Ano Nuevo State Park" near the Spanish teacher while he was drinking coffee. :)

I think that would be a reasonable request for google when the language is set to Spanish, or it is in a Spanish speaking country. But here in the US, when people are looking for information on the previously mentioned state park, they are likely to use the avaliable keys on their keyboard, and type it as "ano". And you don't even want to hear how they pronounce simple Spanish words in Massachusetts or North Dakota. ;)

[Digimon]

Anyway if google recognizes other alfabets different from the latin one it should recognize the spanish "ñ" (at least for the spanish users) Because "cono" is not the same than "coño" or "maña" is not the same than "mana".... In fact they are quite diferent...;););)

[edited by: Digimon at 12:57 am (utc) on Nov. 27, 2002]

[tbear]

quite different.... ;)

[Hagstrom]

¿que?

If I search for año I get 7.400.000 hits, and if I search for ano I get 4.860.00 hits.
Those are not "the same results".

[dormek]

I think it's very important 'eñes' and 'acute accents'. For instance, if you search (Google in Spanish) 'crédito' you see different Adwords than if you search 'credito'.

I mean, if users know that Google doesn't distinguish between 'crédito' and 'credito', a lot of them will type 'credito' (because they are to get the same results).

But some firms are to buy 'crédito' Adword, instead of 'credito', and they are to lost some customers.

[starec]

But some firms are to buy 'crédito' Adword, instead of 'credito', and they are to lost some customers.

If firms don't want to loose customers, they better buy some credito adwords too... For one of my products, its misspelled name brings about 30% of all product referrals:)

Google is actually pretty good in distinguishing strange characters (even with alphabets much more complicated than the Spanish one...)

[tbear]

Does anyone know how spanish speakers treat accents in se's¿
Do they get used or not habitually?
I use them sometimes but since most of my work aims at Brits I often ignore the accents. Then again I must remember that I was very proud to be able to speak Spanish when I first got on the web (6-7 years ago) and put accents in whenever needed. Probably shooting myself in the foot in the process... LOL

[dario]

I'm Spanish and I don't use 2 write acents when I search, nobody writes acents in chats and the young people never write acents in the inet.

[BigDave]

I think it depends on how targeted you want your marketing to be. If you want to limit it to the speakers of the language, I would use the specific characters for that language. If you want to include all us clueless idiots from the states, use what we have available on our keyboards.

[stace]

Spanish keyboards have the accents built in - and yes, they use them much of the time. If you are going to optimize for a Spanish page you need to include words with and without the ñ and other í é ó, etc. accents. I have a page on Las Mañanitas the song - and I've noticed that I get visitors for both variations (although a Spanish teacher did write to complain that in the text of the page she found "Mananitas" - and felt the need to inform me I had written the word improperly). Caramba, can't please the SEs, the surfers, and the grammar police all at the same time!

[dario]

Of course the site need acents and ñ, but when you are searching most of times u dont write acents.
Anyway there are something really important for spanish people, please when you ask some one to make a tranlation try that the person be from Spain, is not a good idea try to sell something to spain with a south american translation.

[msgraph]

I agree with Dario. It is good to have the accents on the site but I believe you will find that most people search without them.

[dirson]

I consider that Google should distinguish between 'ñ' and 'n'. It's not so important for 'acute accents' but yes for distinguish between 'año' and 'ano'.

[Racecar78]

In Wordtracker, I'm seeing "ano" appearing with a count of "65" whereas "año" does not show up at all. Phrases containing the string "año" do show, but not nearly as much as the string "ano".

Just thought this may be of some relevance.

[John_Caius]

Differences with and without the acute accent - compare google searches for pyrénées and pyrenees. :)

[Hagstrom]

I think everybody in this thread agrees now that Google distinguishes between accented and un-accented characters. And why not - they have different ASCII codes-.

Dirson - you have never explained what you mean when you say that Google gives the same results for ano and año.

[Go_Madrid]

dirson - as as already been noted, Google does distinguish between the 2 characters. Just do a search for españa and then espana. While the 1st site is the same, the others change.

[Digimon]

I have to disagree with you Go_Madrid. The 3 first SERPs in google for "españa" y "espana" are exactly the same. Google aparently doesn't distinguish between "ñ" and "n", the same for "pyrenees" and "pyrénées" in the 3 first SERPs (showing 10 results). The mid internet user just see until the 30th SE result. Google should distinguish but....
An old thread about google and special characters
[webmasterworld.com ]

[turk182]

I disagree with you Digimon, or at least in what you say about accents.

Try "cámaras digitales" and "camaras digitales". You'll see some differences in the SERPs. If you have to chose between two keywords, one with accent and another without, always chose the one with no accents. Almost all people don't write accents. We appear in both searchs, and when I take a look to our logs, almost everyone writes "cámaras" without accent.