Two Languages On One Page - Any Problems?

[HuskyPup]

I'm constructing a new specialist ~70 page site on a .com and intend using English and German for a few lines for each on-page description and details throughout the entire site.

In the titlebar I intend having a short English description followed by the same in German.

My question is will this confuse Google at all since I've never done a combined language page before?

Any thoughts?

[meelosh]

huskypup i have done the exact same thing more than a few times with no issues at all.

[indyank]

if you plan to use adsense, i am not sure whether it is within the allowed rules...

what is the benefit of mixing up the languages on the same page rather than separating them out?

[HuskyPup]

i am not sure whether it is within the allowed rules...

I'll check that out.

rather than separating them out?

Quite simply to avoid duplication.

It a well-known widget trade product identical to several national markets and I am simply including a few lines with a description of the product and its most common specifications in English and German.

This is very common with the brochure printed version within the global trade however I've no idea what would happen when I use the same approach on a site.

Normally I would construct a site specifically for each language with the appropriate ccTLD however this is also a bit of an experiment to see how the search engines handle it:-)

If it goes pear-shaped I'll know the answer!

[HuskyPup]

Found the answer:

AdSense will serve relevant ads to your pages in the appropriate language, even if your site contains multiple supported languages.

Please also be aware that placing the AdSense code on pages with content primarily in an unsupported language is not permitted by the AdSense program policies.

So I'm ok with English/German but not English/Urdu if the Urdu was more than 51%!

[aakk9999]

Multiple languages may have influence on ranking the page. If Google thinks the page is in German (because of some german content), then despite you having english title, description etc, if you get <translate this page> in SERPs, your site will rank lower.

And unfortunately it is not enough that you have "more english content" for Google to decide the page is in English.

For example, we are looking after site where the home page content is completely in english apart from 5 words (language changes links). It is a COM site but it is hosted in Croatia.

For some reason Google keeps changing its mind in what language the home page is written. Every so often we see <Translate this page> on english SERPS and the ranking of the site is about 3 places lower then when it somehow "loses" <translate this page> label.

It is really annoying because the title, description, content - all is in english and if you click on <translate this page> it shows you exactly the same content, but it claims it has "translated it" from Croatian to English.

We have put lang=en attribute to head tag as well as http-equiv="Content-Language" to be english, but neither helps - for a while Google decides it is Cro page, then it suddenly changes and decides it is in English, drops the <translate this page> and the site jumps up in SERPs, but then a few weeks later it gets the <translate> label and it falls in SERPS 3 places. It has been yo-yoing like this for the last 6 months.

We are now thinking that perhaps adding more links from english language sites with english anchors will force Google to see page in English.

If this does not work then short of changing hosting to be outside Croatia we are not sure what else we can do to get Google to stabilise in recognising home page language as English.

So be careful when mixing languages as it may affect your ranking.

[tedster]

Back in July Matt Cutts addressed this question in a Google Webmaster Help video: How does Google handle a page containing multiple languages? [youtube.com]

[aakk9999]

Thank you for this link Ted - just watched it again but it does not help me as we are already doing everything what MC says in his video.

Interestingly, apart from the 5 words that name the language changes as "Hrvatski" "Deutch", "Italiano", etc, ALL other content is in English. And it is a well written English language, translated by native speaker. We have even removed title attribute from Croatian language link (had 4 Cro words), and also removed Cro special characters from the company address on the bottom of the first page.

Every time we did such tweak, the home page would lose <translate...> and jump up in SERPS and on one occassion even gain mini site links for the term.... just to get <translate....> label back again few weeks later and drop in SERPs.

This behaviour is consistent for about 4-5 mayor keywords the home page is ranking for.

I am starting to wonder whether the fact that the company is brick and mortar business with Croatian address and Google places page that influences Google on deciding on language. And of course, the fact that it is hosted in Croatia.

This behaviour started somewhere in April this year - before it was steady "English".

The latest change was to set GWT for the domain to be "unlisted" and we are now waiting to see if this will have any influence (the other languages are folder-targeted to countries, only english was not as it has to cover UK as well as the whole of Eastern Europe where most of English searches are coming from).

If anybody has any other idea, I would be grateful.

[tedster]

Have you experimented with the "notranslate" meta tag?

If you're a webmaster and would prefer your web page not be translated by Google Translate, just insert the following meta tag into your HTML file: <meta name="google" value="notranslate">

[translate.google.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

(I was writing this while the several preceding posts were posted, so the flow might not be continuous.)

In reference to the original post... it sounds like the intention here is to rank in both languages, and mixing languages on the page is likely not to work. As aakk9999 describes, Google will see a mixed-language page as belonging to one language or the other, not both, and it may not be the language you desire.

We had two extensive discussions on this problem not too long ago, in July and August of this year, where the goal in fact was to guide Google to just one language. Both discussions go extensively into factors of language determination and what can be done to help Google see it as you do.

Translate problem in Google SERP - not always ranking right language
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4169769.htm [webmasterworld.com]

In Supporters (membership required)...
SEO for multi-language sites. Advice?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/supporters/4183709.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Also, around the same time, this thread cited comments made by Google's JohnMu, which pretty much say what Matt said...

How Does Google Handle More than One Language on a Page?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4177377.htm [webmasterworld.com]

In general, we recommend sticking to a single language per page. If you have multi-lingual content on your website, I'd recommend using separate pages per language. Our language recognition tries to find the most relevant language from your content, so that we can send you users searching in that language. Having the language in the URL... is a great way to make the language of the pages clear to users, so if you can do that, it might make sense (Google determines the language based on the content, so it's not necessary for us).

[google.com...]

[aakk9999]

Thank you both. No, I did not know about notranslate meta. I will wait first to see if the latest changes have made any impact and if not, will try to add notranslate meta.

[HuskyPup]

Thanks for all the information and links.

aakk9999 - I wondered whether this sort of thing would happen but the funny thing is since starting on this site I've realised that it was going to make things too complicated for the English-speaking markets since although they do use this widget it tends to be to a standardised specification whereas the German-speaking markets it is very much a bespoke product so I've decided to construct only German and English specific pages.

It's interesting to realise that the old printed brochure can out whack the web at times...plus you can fold it up and put it in your pocket, the batteries never go flat, it really doesn't mind if you drop it and if you lose it you can always ask for another one:-)