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1)Will it help to put <META NAME="Language" CONTENT="nor"> in my tags.
2)If it works. Does the freshbot read this tag or do I have to wait another month to see the changes
3) I`m pretty pleased with my rank in the danish index ;-)
Will I show up in both indexes if I use:
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="nor">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="da"> or should I just copy the page, put in some blabla to make them different and use a norwegian language tag in the new one.
4)Will a language tag hurt my ranking in the main index.
5)Why do google put the page in the danish index? Shouldn`t a .no domain by default end up in the norwegian index?
Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]
1-2) Others may correct me, but I think that Google ignores META-tags.
3) A page can only be in on language, so you have to make two separate pages (remember to let them link to each other).
4) Apparently searches are influenced by the searcher's profile (language, IP-address etc). For instance a Norwegian searching for "møller" would also find moeller and möller.
However since every page must be in one language or another, the only way the language-tag could "hurt", would be if the designated language was wrong.
5)Why do google put the page in the danish index?
Only G knows. In all probability Google looks at the text and since Norwegian (bokmål) is closer to Danish than to New Norwegian (nynorsk) it's easy to make mistakes. In my experience Google also does a poor job when it comes to recognising Middle Low German.
> Shouldn`t a .no domain by default end up in the norwegian index?
That's probably a part of the algorithm.
[customerURL.com...]
[customerURL.com...]
We've never had any problems in Google or any other for that matter. But Hagstrom is right: remember to link most of your important pages together. We also include a language button to help users easily switch from one language to the other.
When Google steps into our bilingual sites, it seems to realize somehow that more than one language is involved here and we never have any problems.
You can always sticky me if you want. I can show an example of how it's done
Good luck
3: My personal opinion is that there are too many fjeldab.. errh I mean Norwegians in the Danish index.
5: Several factors count. Is your website hosted in Denmark?
One of the reasons is that an incredible amount of old Danish manuscripts are published on Norwegian web-sites.
Being from Denmark, I too have experienced quite a lot of bugs in the algo in regards to Danish and Norweigan language. Midly put, Google simply can't properly tell the difference between the two. Admitted, they are very similar, but they should be able to figure it out though. A LOT of Norweigan stuff shows up Danish language searches and vice versa.
1)Will it help to put <META NAME="Language" CONTENT="nor"> in my tags.
Probably not at Google, but it certainly wont hurt you otherwise.
Will I show up in both indexes
Yes. If your pages are build in a certain language, they will for the most part show up on searches in that language.
4)Will a language tag hurt my ranking in the main index.
No.
5)Why do google put the page in the danish index? Shouldn`t a .no domain by default end up in the norwegian index?
Yes, it should show up in the Norweigan index - Google think they are Danish.
Also, have a look in the European Forum [webmasterworld.com], there you'll find a lot of good stuff on languages etc.
Held og lykke :)
That would denote norwegian language, not norwegian location. Thus the ccTLD has nothing to do with it.
Obviously Google mistakenly read your site as danish. Looks like a bug in the language detection to me.
So the idea to put in a language tag sounds about right. If it helps much is another question.
What I would avoid is putting up two different tags, or a wrong one.
Furthermore, if you want to make sure to be recognized by Google as being a site in norwegian language, you might send them an email.
Again, if it helps much is another question.
Re SEO_practioner
You can choose that solution because french and english are 2 completely different languages. If I made 1 catalog for danish and 1 for norwegian it would never work. There is a bigger differece between the english I write (because of my lack of skill) and the english you write, than there are between danish and norwegian.
Re troels
Det heter fjellap... ;-)
No, it is not hosted in Denmark. It is only a few pages of about 90 under the domain that google sort out as "danish". I see no pattern, all incomming links seems to come from norwegian pages too.
Re heini
Yes I`m talking about "Søk gjennom sider innen norsk (bokmål)"
My problem is that Kvasir use that option as default and I`m loosing some traffic. On the other hand, I get traffic from Danmark, and I prefere to keep that, so I guess I will just leave those pages alone, and make some new pages, with a differnet text and same content, and hope that they show up in the norwegian index.
That's very possible. I assume Google looks for certain keywords on your page to determine language. If I were Google, I would look for Norwegian words like deg, av, å, enn, mer......
Maybe your page has very little text (and lots of graphics)?
And yes it contains some typical norwegian words.
But I`m not alone, one of the biggest newspapers in Norway have totally about 50.000 pages in the index. Google think 5000 of them are danish. Another site I found have 44000 pages, google thinks 16.000 of the are danish, so I will say they have a problem.
If you search for "technical content" on "Søk gjennom sider innen dansk ", searches on words like "pc" or "palm"..... you will find a lot of norwegian pages. If you do the oposite you will find none.
I can say "definite", because I don't see any significant changes in traffic from foreign search engines/directories (which represent just about 40% of all referrals for my portal).
Which reminds me how dangerous it is to rely on a single search engine for traffic.
I`ll sticky mail you the url.
I don't really blame Google. 75% of the page is made up by a pulldown-window with brand names that are not any "language" at all.
There's not much text on the page for Google to evaluate and, as you say, Danish and Norwegian are pretty much the same:
Norwegian:
Du kan kjøpe kontaktlinser fra USA, på nettet, og spare opptil 1000,- på ett års forbruk av linser.
Danish:
Du kan købe kontaktlinser fra USA, på nettet, og spare op til 1000,- på et års forbrug af linser.
The only thing to do is to add more text and accept a few errors on Google's part.
If it's any consolation: you're not alone. My site is bilingual, Danish/English, but since I present a lot of Middle Low German texts, Google has deemed 47 of my pages to be German and 35 to be Dutch.
