Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Yesterday, I saw some of my listings added with 'Translate this page' link on Google. When I clicked on the page, I saw my 100% English page being translated from Spanish to English. Then I realized that my server is recognized by IP country database as a Argentina site.
Could IP country DB be the cause? Should I move immediately?
Thanks!
There is a lot of instability on Google right now, so this might well be a temporary thing and an immediate reaction may not be warranted. Have you checked the results on several data centers?
Maybe someone knows what is going on?
Suddently, although I made no change to the page and did not move the host, Google added a [Translate this page] link to it in its SERPs. Obviously Google now considers this page as written in French.
The immediate consequence was a drop of ranking of this page in the google.com SERPs for a search in English, and a lift of ranking in Google France, google.fr (for a search in French or in English).
Background information:
- The site is hosted in France
- Most of the pages of this site are written in French
- The home + another page of this site are listed in the French section of Dmoz.
I suspected that all of these 3 factors, could influence the fact that Google now sees this page as "in French". But none of these 3 factors changed.
The only thing that changed is that in its continuous backlinks development process, the site gained most of it backlinks from sites hosted in France and written in French.
So far my conclusion would be that these French backlinks are the cause of the changed observed in Google. Unless Google has changed its criteria for language classification. Or maybe it is just a(nother) Google bug;)
However, my site has ZERO Spanish, not even the popular forums where I can't control the language.
I haven't seen this anomaly before I switch my host to the new server whose IP belongs to Argentina.
even my german page(site) has heaps of english inbound links - this could indeed be one reason. A stupid on if you ask me since you can't control who links to you.
For me it looks like another G-bug.
This has come up many times.
Google are you listening?: Just announce a tag that lets site managers declaire their location. Its a big world and the internt removes national borders, people WILL host all over the world, AND they will often have a global domain like .com even though their site is intended for a specific country.
If you announce a tag that lets site managers declaire their location, your SERPs will be more accurate AND site managers will get the right visitors. Isn't that what you want?
First check for the country tag,
if none, check for the country domain,
if none, check country IP.
seems like sometimes wonders happen! Today G decided to flag my page as GERMAN :-) .
A couple of days ago i did a change in the coding of the page - indeed i had quite some javascript in the HEAD tags, BEFORE the METAs and before the LANGUAGE tag. I removed the script and put it back again but this time AFTER the whole META stuff.
I know, it sounds unlikely, but by now Google recognizes the page in it's real language.
Don't wait to see what happens, just run away, and be happy with a 100% blooded US server.
Be a patriot!
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Talking seriously, if it was my case, I would switch, ASAP. How much time do you think the move could take? Not much I think. =)
