Foreign Characters

ø = ö = oe

[Hagstrom]

I was just doing a little self-Googling while waiting for the Dance: [google.com ].

Google doesn't just return hagstrøm - but also hagström and hagstroem. I'm quite sure it didn't work like that last month?

[Macguru]

Hi Hagstrøm,

instand1 noticed this important change in late January.

[webmasterworld.com...]

<added>OOps!, just noticed you posted in it. I also noticed that Google shows foreign characters in serps when visitors ommit them, in the beginning of Febuary.</added>

[Hagstrom]

Hi Macguru

But this is different. The other thread was about regional Google - i.e. Google.de or setting "search only for German pages".

I'm using Google.com and asking for pages in any language.

<added>OOps!, just noticed that you added to your post ;)</added>

[lazerzubb]

Yes it looks like they've integrated it to .com, it was also noted with french searches:
[webmasterworld.com...]

A good thing i think.

[Hagstrom]

> A good thing i think.

I tend to agree, but I would like to be able to turn it on and off.

[instand1]

Yes, this is new. Any guess when exactly this change had been implemented? On 5th of February 2003 this change was not yet there.

[troels nybo nielsen]

We have an expression in Danish: "pø om pø" meaning "little by little". But if I search the Web for "pø" I find lots of pages about Edgar Allan Poe. Seems to me that Google still has a minor problem here.

Tro-els

[fatpeter]

I'm finding now that it has reverted back to the way it was.Different results on .com not merged any more.

:(

maybe with the update it will be merged?

[Rumbas]

Funny thing, if you do "Sørensen", a lot of Sørensens comes up. Not many Sorensen or Soerensen. There's not a lot of those I know, but anyway..

<side note>
Having a name with foreign characters can be a REAL pain on the web - espcially with credit cards etc. Had many many struggels with that.
</side note>

[Macguru]

>>On 5th of February 2003 this change was not yet there.

I noticed it on the 4th of February. I believe it was on .com, it could be on .ca too.

<added> Dusting notes, I found it was both on .be and .com.</added>

[fatpeter]

It's probably not important for most people what with the dance coming up but I am seeing merged results again on .com

edited for spelling

[Hagstrom]

> Funny thing, if you do "Sørensen", a lot of Sørensens comes up. Not many Sorensen or Soerensen

The Sørensens are lucky! Just think of all those poor people named Doeden - who have to wade through tons of Danish and Swedish pages about Death (=Døden) ;)

[daamsie]

The Sørensens are lucky! Just think of all those poor people named Doeden - who have to wade through tons of Danish and Swedish pages about Death (=Døden) ;)

I did a search for doeden and it wasn't till teh sixth page that a døden came up. A reversed search for Døden, didn't yield any doedens that I could find at all. Looks to me like it's fairly solid! It looks like the only reason that the døden result came up at all was because of it's domain looking like doeden.blabla.com - incoming text links did it for that one! Just my observations.. it may be different for other terms of course :)

[Hagstrom]

> I did a search for doeden and it wasn't till teh sixth page that a døden came up

Now we're getting somewhere. When I seach for "Doeden", the first 7 are about "døden" (curiously no.6 and 7 are by Troels Nybo Nielsen :) ). I don't find Doeden before number 8.

Could it be a difference in our IP-addresses? Where are you searching from?

[daamsie]

searching from australia on www3 (as i have been most of tonight :))

[jamie]

that is great news!

cafés and cafes are now returning the same results! well done google!

for us as a spanish site with a uk market this is brilliant. now i just have to go and put all the accents back on again and spell everything correctly ;-)

[Hagstrom]

> for us as a spanish site with a uk market this is brilliant. now i just have to go and put all the accents back on again and spell everything correctly ;-)

Maybe you should check with your UK customers first, since apparently it doesn't work for an English-speaking country like Australia (and maybe the Google-dance isn't the best time to make experiments ;) )

[troels nybo nielsen]

Some people with a not very common Swedish name have problems with both Scandinavian characters and accents. They have ae in first syllable and é in last syllable. Websites about people with that name get mixed up with pages using a rather common word in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

Never before heard of anybody named Doeden. I found one on page 7. Seems that Google send different SERPs to different countries when problematic characters are used.

<aside>Cat's out of the bag. Must really get around to update that website with my new design and other kinds of heavyhanded editing. And then there is the old problem with my "nick" balancing on the edge of one of the paragraphs in ToS</aside>

[WebWalla]

jamie - there is still some difference, because although the first SERPs are basically the same, the total number of results changes.

[Hagstrom]

> Never before heard of anybody named Doeden. I found one on page 7.

Have you never heard about famous golfer Andy Doeden? 401 pages in Google.

That's more than me and all the Swedish and Finnish Martin Hagströms combined