Language-sensitive SEs?

mhormann · December 19, 2004

Since I'll be running my osC in four languages, I'd quite like to know if search engines respect and/or check for language tags.

Apart from having the HTML_PARAMS in the <html> tag, I thought about adding a

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">

tag, since I've done a mod to include extra header info anyway.

Then again, I don't want to get punished for having too bad a HEAD/BODY ratio...

Or maybe even get lower rankings since my site has the "wrong" language...

Still, it would be nice to get better ranks in language-specific searches for my site. And of course potential customers will be happy to see that my shop speaks their language (even if I might not...).

So is there a list or does anyone know which (if any) Search Engines look for language? And for what tags or header or meta info?

One more: Does anyone know if it is necessary to put above tag BEFORE the <title>, "Description" and "Keyword"? Or is that info taken "as is"?

boxtel · December 20, 2004

Since I'll be running my osC in four languages, I'd quite like to know if search engines respect and/or check for language tags.

Apart from having the HTML_PARAMS in the <html> tag, I thought about adding a
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">
tag, since I've done a mod to include extra header info anyway.

Then again, I don't want to get punished for having too bad a HEAD/BODY ratio...

Or maybe even get lower rankings since my site has the "wrong" language...

Still, it would be nice to get better ranks in language-specific searches for my site. And of course potential customers will be happy to see that my shop speaks their language (even if I might not...).

So is there a list or does anyone know which (if any) Search Engines look for language? And for what tags or header or meta info?

One more: Does anyone know if it is necessary to put above tag BEFORE the <title>, "Description" and "Keyword"? Or is that info taken "as is"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

since SE's do not provide a browser language, they will get the default language from your site until they hit the link that changes your sites language. But because they do not get sessions, that other language does not hold. Then again, if you have the "change language link" on every page, they will index every page in every language.

mhormann · December 20, 2004

Yes, sure, thanks nevertheless. I'm just spidering myself... at about 30,000 links now...

I guess the question might be misunderstood: I wonder if SEs will actually take, say, the ITALIAN description for ITALIAN content and not maybe just the ENGLISH one (since they might have come in thru the English page).

When I'm reading this, I won't know the question myself... hm...

Let me rephrase. What I WANT is this:

I have no 'entry domain' for Italian or Dutch. Still, if somebody searches in Italy or The Netherlands (or specifies "I'm looking for Italian pages") they should get the ITALIAN (or DUTCH) description and keywords.

And so I wonder how SEs would distinguish CONTENT in different languages and whether I should maybe do like this:

<meta name="Description" lang="nl" content="Dutch description...">

OR if it would just be enough to have the

<html dir="LTR" lang="nl">

since HTML is actually parent to both HEAD and BODY und thus SHOULD set the language for the entire content.

As far as i understand HTML and the W3C, 'lang=' (except in <HTML>) should only be used if the language DIFFERS from the rest of the content.

This of course opens up the question if it makes sense to use

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="nl">

or even have the server output an actual header containing the language.

I've also tried to contact some SE vendors, but to no avail. It seems the larger ones either dont (want to) understand the question or just want to keep everything a trade secret. Still waiting for Google's answer though. At least Google Germany SHOULD be interested... they're really not optimized for German searches.

*Phew* ... Xenu is a hell of a spider... 37,000 links for ONE osC shop already.

boxtel · December 20, 2004

Yes, sure, thanks nevertheless. I'm just spidering myself... at about 30,000 links now...

I guess the question might be misunderstood: I wonder if SEs will actually take, say, the ITALIAN description for ITALIAN content and not maybe just the ENGLISH one (since they might have come in thru the English page).

When I'm reading this, I won't know the question myself... hm...

Let me rephrase. What I WANT is this:

I have no 'entry domain' for Italian or Dutch. Still, if somebody searches in Italy or The Netherlands (or specifies "I'm looking for Italian pages") they should get the ITALIAN (or DUTCH) description and keywords.

And so I wonder how SEs would distinguish CONTENT in different languages and whether I should maybe do like this:
<meta name="Description" lang="nl" content="Dutch description...">
OR if it would just be enough to have the
<html dir="LTR" lang="nl">
since HTML is actually parent to both HEAD and BODY und thus SHOULD set the language for the entire content.

As far as i understand HTML and the W3C, 'lang=' (except in <HTML>) should only be used if the language DIFFERS from the rest of the content.

This of course opens up the question if it makes sense to use
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="nl">
or even have the server output an actual header containing the language.

I've also tried to contact some SE vendors, but to no avail. It seems the larger ones either dont (want to) understand the question or just want to keep everything a trade secret. Still waiting for Google's answer though. At least Google Germany SHOULD be interested... they're really not optimized for German searches.

*Phew* ... Xenu is a hell of a spider... 37,000 links for ONE osC shop already.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

all these headers depend on the language you serve them.

the spiders will read anything you give them.

when they come in, they get whatever language you have setup for them or the default one. Whether that is english, german, whatever.

only when they hit the link www.store.com/index.php?language=nl or something like that, they will receive the dutch pages along with the dutch headers.

so if you have a multi-language site and a link to change the language for your users, the spiders will see your pages in all of your languages.

I have english and chinese and both are indexed without any special treatment from my side. See spiders as simple users that cannot read javascript and did not define their browser language and do not get session-id's from you. Basically that is the only significant difference.

mhormann · December 20, 2004

"No special treatment" sounds good, thanks for the feedback!

So I'll probably just leave all the extra "lang" stuff out...

For those who are interested... still waiting for my Xenu report... last time I looked it had spidered about 60,000 links on my page (including each and every language), but it got a lot of session id's :-( (it opens up to 30 threads in parallel and hit my site quite hard *grin*)

So I'll have to check logs and put it into my spiders.txt :-)

December 20, 2004

My reference is:

http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-1999...ng.html#h-8.1.2

8.1.2 Inheritance of language codes

An element inherits language code information according to the following order of precedence (highest to lowest):

and the following exemple

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

<HTML lang="fr">

and in each /language/language.php there is already somewhere around line 48:

// Global entries for the <html> tag
define('HTML_PARAMS','dir="LTR" lang="fr"');
[CODE]// Global entries for the <html> tag
define('HTML_PARAMS','dir="LTR" lang="nl"');
// Global entries for the <html> tag
define('HTML_PARAMS','dir="LTR" lang="de"');
// Global entries for the <html> tag
define('HTML_PARAMS','dir="LTR" lang="en"');
// Global entries for the <html> tag
define('HTML_PARAMS','dir="LTR" lang="es"');

mhormann · December 23, 2004

Authoritative reading John, thanks!

So I'll rely on good old <html> tag params mainly, DON'T put any extra in the META tags but still output the "http-quiv" tag—who knows. I think this'll give the best compromis between size and functionality.

After spidering myself a little, all this seems quite coherent (together with all the other mods I made).

berkedam · December 23, 2004

So I'll rely on good old <html> tag params mainly, ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's actually called a <html> element :(

tammy507 · December 27, 2004

I have english and chinese and both are indexed without any special treatment from my side.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Off the original subject a bit, but hoping since you have chinese installed you might be able to give me a clue in the right direction.

Ive install the Traditional Chinese lang pack from the contributions.

Ive added "chinese" to my IE 6 browser.

When I switch to chinese on my site, the frame tags are showing: "/td>"

The same thing happened when I tried to install Russian.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Tammy

tammy507 · December 27, 2004

Sorry, it wouldnt let me edit... I forgot to add my url

http://www.discountcelebrityphoto.com

boxtel · December 27, 2004

Off the original subject a bit, but hoping since you have chinese installed you might be able to give me a clue in the right direction.

Ive install the Traditional Chinese lang pack from the contributions.

Ive added "chinese" to my IE 6 browser.

When I switch to chinese on my site, the frame tags are showing: "/td>"

The same thing happened when I tried to install Russian.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Tammy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

not sure what you mean with frame tags ?

when I switch from english to traditional chinese,

it will show this in the header of the pages :

<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<head>

tammy507 · December 30, 2004

not sure what you mean with frame tags ?

By frame tags, I meant .. While I am looking at the webpage:

the html tags are "showing" : such as "/td>"

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