Multiple Language or Country Versions and Google

The best way to make the best of your translations or geographical versions

[vincevincevince]

Could the members of this forum recommend ways in which multiple language versions of a website, or geographically targetted versions, can be all indexed within Google.

Typical methods of recording geographical or language preference include a combination of cookies, IP detection, and requiring user sign-up/sign-in. None of these work well with Google, which tends to record the default English North American version.

A related question must be how to avoid duplicate content issues when providing information which is geo-targetted but may not differ much in some parts between some locations.