Localisation, Duplicate Content and Supplementals

Losing usability to keep Google Happy

[glitterball]

I have recently made a change to a site that is localised in 3 Language versions, in the same was that Wikipedia is localised i.e. http://es.example.com, http://de.example.com etc.

Formerly, each page would contain a link to it's corresponding translation - a useful navigational link to the user. However, after just over a year much of the site had gone supplemental.

I have now removed these links, replacing them with new links that point to the homepage of each language version.

Since doing this, the pages that were supplemental have started to re-appear in the results and lose their supplemental status.

I really think that Google is creating a serious problem here. I have actally been forced to make my website worse for my users to satisfy the Google index, which is surely the opposite of what they should encourage.

[edited by: tedster at 8:42 pm (utc) on Dec. 6, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]

[Spine]

Hmm, interesting. I've had supplemental problems since shortly after creating a translated version of the site in it's own directory. Some of those pages (but not all) link to the English version.

I also recently started to wonder if part of the problem was that englishpage1.html and frenchpage1.html both had the same outgoing links, and both shared the same image files.

My pages each have a unique photo and 1 or 2 unique links, as well as the standard nav and site graphics. After adding the translated version I'd have 2 pages with the same unique link/photo fingerprint, but in a with different language. Doesn't sound like it should be a problem, but who knows?

As far as usability for users, I've been tweaking a bit, but I must say it's tempting to drop the alternate language pages - MSN and Yahoo like them though...

[glitterball]

Spine, perhaps you could try the same change as I made and see if it helps (and let me know if does)?

I think Google should clarify what we should be doing to avoid duplicate content penalties for localised pages.
If they do decide to fix/change this, then perhaps they could let us know, so that I can change my links back to how they were before.

[Spine]

I'm on it. I did have a large number of translated pages that didn't link to their english version, but I'm still wondering if the same images and outgoing links had something to do with it.

I'll let you know what happens.