Working with multi-regional websites

[djbaxter]

Working with multi-regional websites
Google Webmaster Central
Friday, March 12, 2010

Did you know that a majority of users surveyed feel that having information in their own language was more important than a low price? Living in a non-English-speaking country, I've seen friends and family members explicitly look for and use local and localized websites?properly localized sites definitely have an advantage with users. Google works hard to show users the best possible search results. Many times those are going to be pages that are localized, for the user's location and/or in the user's language.

If you're planning to take the time to create and maintain a localized version of your website, making it easy to recognize and find is a logical part of that process. In this blog post series, we'll take a look at what is involved with multi-regional and multi-lingual websites from a search engine point of view. A multi-regional website is one that explicitly targets users in various regions (generally different countries); we call it multilingual when it is available in multiple languages, and sometimes, the website targets both multiple regions and is in multiple languages. Let's start with some general preparations and then look at websites that target multiple regions.

Preparing for global websites
Expanding a website to cover multiple regions and/or languages can be challenging. By creating multiple versions of your website, any issues with the base version will be multiplied; make sure that you have everything working properly before you start. Given that this generally means you'll suddenly be working with a multiplied number of URLs, don't forget that you'll need appropriate infrastructure to support the website.

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[WarnerO]

I've always though that if you want to have a success in your business worldwide, think about building a site on several languages and if you want to attract Japanese people, it would be a good idea to do it in Japanese.

 

[harrysmith]

I've always though that if you want to have a success in your business worldwide, think about building a site on several languages and if you want to attract Japanese people, it would be a good idea to do it in Japanese.

Good Idea but it's not much feasible as if you start getting potential inquiries from Japanese clients who don't speak English !!