This week’s International Search Summit in London brought many interesting search and social media marketing topics to the table. Over the next couple of days key takeaways from the summit will be posted here on Multilingual Search, so stay tuned. [...]]]> This week’s International Search Summit in London brought many interesting search and social media marketing topics to the table. Over the next couple of days key takeaways from the summit will be posted here on Multilingual Search, so stay tuned. Here are 5 tips to start off with (and sorry about the lack of spacing, unfortunately it’s not working the way I’d like it to):

1. Find Your Local Hairdresser

So what has this got to do with international search and social? A lot actually. Bas van den Beld did a presentation on the Global Collision of Social, Local and Mobile (and won the medallion speaker award) in which he included a bunch of stories to prove his points.

Social has always been around, but we now have all these new tools to fully realise this behaviour. However, surprisingly many marketers still don’t get how social works and Bas pointed out how the outdated traditional one-way marketing communications model – if you don’t listen to what I’m saying, I’ll just scream louder – has in many cases been applied to social networking platforms. The reality, though, is that we live in a world where the power of peer recommendations far outweigh that of brand communication. So instead of always focusing on the end-consumer (or worse even, on yourself), identify and influence your local hairdresser (your brand advocate) who’s likely to talk about your product or service to the circles where it’s relevant and have her spread your message. This is not only more cost-effective, it’s also infinitely more powerful.

• See State of Search for more detailed write up of Bas’ presentation at the ISS.

2. Targeting the Middle East? It’s NOT all Arabic!!!

The Middle East is a region that is slowly starting to appear on the radars of foreign corporations. When seeing some of the figures presented by Lee Mancini at the International Search Summit in London you understand why companies should begin to care about this region. Search and social are both growing at a phenomenal pace but beware that it’s not all Arabic when targeting the MENA region. According to Lee, 54 percent of Google searches are now made in Arabic, 34 percent in English, and 8 percent in French.

Language use varies significantly within the region and even Arabic has outspoken regional differences, i.e. Arabic in Egypt and Saudi Arabia is not identical. So, keep in mind that the Middle East is far from a “one size fits all” region, meaning that replicating marketing strategies across Middle Eastern countries is likely to be just as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum, as Mary Schmich once wisely said.

• See State of Search for a more detailed write-up of Lee’s presentation.

3. Avoid using generic TLDs in Germany

It’s a global world indeed. Germany, however, is still largely relying on its own resources since there’s a vast amount of information available in German, meaning that the necessity for foreign inputs isn’t as prevalent as is often the case in smaller countries.  As a consequence, searches are conducted in German and there’s generally little ‘interference’ from other countries in SERPs – only companies like Facebook can get away with a .com domain, Andre Alpar stated during his presentation. Use instead a .de domain and also beware that German’s are fond of using the dash symbol in their domain names, e.g. search-engine-land rather than all in one go.

4. Playing “all white” in Germany is an uphill battle

Germany is arguably the most competitive market within the EU. The country has the highest amount of domains in Europe and these domains rank for the lowest number of keywords. For this reason, link acquisition strategies are very aggressive, where buying/renting links up until now has often proved a necessity to ranking high – as Andre put it, you either need deep pockets or a lot of time to succeed in Germany’s highly competitive search landscape. Whether Google’s Penguin Update will change the code of conduct will be interesting to follow.

5. Treat online reputation management like brand/PR spend

According to Google’s Shopper Sciences study, in 2011 the average shopper used 10.4 information sources to make a purchasing decision, up from 5.3 sources in 2010. This ever growing power of online feedback and research in shaping consumer purchasing decisions has made online reputation management one of the most crucial battlefields for business success. Social proof, i.e. what people are saying about your brand/company, often is the tipping point between buying from you or taking business elsewhere. But since social proof’s impact on conversions is more difficult to quantify and track, marketing budgets are often assigned to areas with higher accountability.

In his presentation, Nick Garner advised companies to identify the hot spots where potential customers go to seek information and validation about their services and products – what Nick referred to as “Zero Moments” – and then influence, shape and manage the course of conversation happening on these important customer touchpoints.

No related posts.

Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine, recently disclosed its Q1 2012 financial results. Results exceeded analyst expectations, with revenues up 51 percent to $200.3 million, and net income up 53 percent to $43 million. Surely, such figures would make most company [...]]]> Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine, recently disclosed its Q1 2012 financial results. Results exceeded analyst expectations, with revenues up 51 percent to $200.3 million, and net income up 53 percent to $43 million. Surely, such figures would make most company executives jump up and down, however, digging into the figures makes one question whether this apparently positive financial performance is actually worrisome from Yandex’s perspective?

Despite exceeding analyst expectation, could or should the figures be even higher? Firstly, it’s important to keep in mind that the Russian internet is growing at a massive pace which — needless to say — has a positive effect on online advertising platforms in the vast country. In fact, Russian online advertising expenditures were up 56 percent in 2011, with the biggest gain coming from contextual ads, up 63 percent and no sign of stagnation in 2012. In other words, it appears that Yandex’s Q1 2012 revenue increase is actually below that of the overall market.

Russian Online Ad Spend % of Total Ad Market

Source: Yandex

Is Google gaining traction at the expense of Yandex

What’s particularly noteworthy is the fact that contextual ads have seen the highest overall gain. That’s Yandex domain, with text-ads still accounting for 90 percent of its revenues, notes Ingrid Lunden. This indicates that competitors are eating into Yandex’s share of the market. Lunden further notes:

“Yandex’s share of the search market in Russia, its largest market by far, is now at 59 percent against competition from Google and others: last year it was close to 65 percent (…) Before today, Yandex had been trading down amid concerns that competitors (mainly Google) were gaining market share on the company in the search advertising market, an area where Yandex in the past had enjoyed a healthy lead.”

Russia is one of the few bastions left for Google still to conquer.  Although the Mountain View, California-based company still hasn’t succeeded in its efforts of doing so, stealing 4-6 percent market share from homegrown Yandex in one year is rather significant. My fellow columnist and Editor-in-Chief of Multilingual-Search, Andy Atkins-Krueger, last year wrote a piece on Search Engine Land about where Google was investing its international marketing spend and basically indicated that the company was pumping money into the Russian market in order to break down Yandex’s stronghold. Along the lines it said:

“Despite their vast spend in Russia, Google does not appear to have moved the Russian market share needle against the leader in the market , namely Yandex which has actually been claiming share gains during the same period.”

Well, it appears the effect might have started to kick in. Because Yandex has proved resilient to Google’s many attempts to challenge its dominant position up until now, this has allowed the company to allocate resources to look beyond Russia for expansion. Although it’s still too early to conclude anything, it poses the question: Will Yandex take stock of the situation and how will it affect its expansion plans?

Two potential scenarios

Turkey was the first (obvious) choice outside of the CIS-region and Ilya Segalovich, CTO of Yandex, told the WSJ Europe yesterday that the company aims to claim 20-30 percent of Turkey’s total search engine traffic, although it currently has less than 1 percent of the attractive market. Expanding into Turkey has proven quite resourceful due to the language barrier, meaning that “Yandex has had to redesign all internal procedures and the parts of the engine to be worked with people who don’t know Russian”, Segalovich said. During the interview, he also hinted that further expansion was highly likely and suggested other European countries as future potential targets.

However, Yandex’s expansion plans are fuelled by profit made in Russia – and if Google keeps eating into its market share in its by far largest market, there are two potential strategic scenarios;

1) Penetrating the Turkish market and expanding into new ones will be put on hold to concentrate fully on defending its home turf.

2) Expanding marketing efforts and headcount to defend its home turf while penetrating Turkey and expanding into new markets.

Is it just a matter of time before Google reigns supreme in Russia as well, or does Yandex have what it takes to combat Google and stay on top in Russia?

Business Development Director of Yandex, Preston Carey, will be speaking about making it in Russia at the International Search Summit @ SMX Advanced in Seattle on June 7th. Tickets are still available.

No related posts.

The mainstream adoption of the internet and the heavy usage of it via multiple devices have blurred the lines between the virtual and real world. As the way consumers process information and make buying decisions changes, so does the marketing [...]]]> The mainstream adoption of the internet and the heavy usage of it via multiple devices have blurred the lines between the virtual and real world. As the way consumers process information and make buying decisions changes, so does the marketing approach to effectively reaching those consumers. This new reality has by some marketers been coined “The Zero Moment of Truth” and is on the agenda at the upcoming International Search Summit in London, where Nick Garner from Unibet will address the ZMOT principle from a global branding perspective. In the following, Nick is answering a couple of questions in advance of his session to introduce the topic.

You look after global search for Unibet, what are the biggest challenges you’re facing in 2012 when it comes to international search?
Google constantly changing the goalposts along with Multilanguage and the number of different teams I neeed to work with in order to get coverage across all of our 25 international territories

At ISS you’re speaking on ZMOT – Zero Moment of Truth, why do you think that is so important?
Because in SEO we’re obsessed with the direct marketing paradigm, i.e. 100% tracking. With Google slowly cutting off the supply of usable data via https search > ‘not provided’, SEOs need to look at other ‘soft’ spots. ZMOT is such a place. The idea is simple. Users look for ‘social proof’ from others in the form of reviews and informed commentary to help make a buying decision. They go to on average 10 different information sources online before making a buying decision about you. If you have presence in these places and the touch points are positive and helpful, then you will get more business – it’s simple!

How can organisations implement a ZMOT strategy globally? How can they measure success?
If you do a brand search for ‘brand x’ and if the brand results are good and positive, then by accident or design they are doing something to help ‘social proof’ around their brand. Success can be measured around KPI’s similar to social ones, i.e. correlatory KPI’s like surveys where users are asked about their view on Brand X after their search results have been cleaned up. Customers can also be tracked using tools like double click where you can get an idea of where the ‘hot’ touch points are with purchasing customers.

If you could give one tip to marketers working on multilingual campaigns, what would it be?
Centralise expertise around the ‘algo’ side of SEO and have tight workflow processes so you can hire part timers locally to do outreach etc for you, therefore allowing you to have a more natural interaction locally, whilst scoring on all the ‘rocket science’ stuff.

Finally, why attend the International Search Summit?
International Search is still a mystery to a lot of brands because of the scope, scale and problems around multi language. Here you will learn that it’s a case of a structured approach to tap into some of the most lucrative search territory there is.

No related posts.

In an article published this week, Diane Mermigas stated that “Facebook’s developing social search framework will be a catalyst for redefining and monetizing mobile, unleashing a torrent of new revenue and value that eventually will make its $100 [...]]]> In an article published this week, Diane Mermigas stated that “Facebook’s developing social search framework will be a catalyst for redefining and monetizing mobile, unleashing a torrent of new revenue and value that eventually will make its $100 billion IPO valuation look like child’s play.”

Mermigas argues that Facebook’s endless source of personalised information is its competitive edge and what could ultimately set it apart from Google and even surpass the world’s currently undisputed search champion.

That’s an extensive debate which won’t be covered in this piece; however, one could be forgiven for questioning whether Mr. Zuckerberg’s ubiquitous social network is even worth its expected $100 billion valuation prior to the company’s forthcoming IPO when reviewing this week’s S-1 filing.

Facebook’s Q1 2012 revenue might be up 69 percent from the same period last year, yet operating and net income are the lowest since September 2010. Obviously, this is indicative of heavy investments made by the company. For instance, the number of full-time employees rose 46 percent from last year to 3,539, notes Christopher Heine. Growth is now almost entirely happening in emerging markets, where revenue per user has proven lower compared to mature markets — and expenses connected to fuelling expansion in those markets through increased headcount and maintenance have been rising at a faster pace than revenue.

Fuelling future growth or first signs of declining profitability?

Let’s just look at the international perspective for a second. Facebook’s stated mission is to make the world more open and connected – a mission it certainly lives up to. The social giant now claims it has more than 900 million users globally, of which a staggering 532 million are daily active users. Having this kind of scale, combined with highly personalised information on every single one of its users across almost all markets, do indeed give Facebook something no one else has, as Diane Mermigas argues. In short, Facebook becomes the place to go to for any international advertising campaign.

In addition, Facebook has seen astonishing growth rates in key future markets such as Brazil and India. While expenses might exceed the relative revenue increase when penetrating those markets, this is unlikely to be the case a couple of years from now as Facebook penetration will grow and emerging markets generally become more economically attractive.

However, the question  still remains: Is Facebook simply building the foundation for future growth or are we witnessing the first signs of decreasing profitability?

Source: Seeking Alpha

No related posts.

It’s no secret that mobile internet usage and ad spend are rapidly gaining on PCs, nor is the fact that digital overall is eating into traditional media’s share of the total ad market, with 2012 being [...]]]> It’s no secret that mobile internet usage and ad spend are rapidly gaining on PCs, nor is the fact that digital overall is eating into traditional media’s share of the total ad market, with 2012 being the year where online ad spend in the U.S. is set to exceed that of print for the first time ever.

Some recent U.S. mobile search spend figures were quite surprising, though – particularly the notion that tablets claimed two-thirds of the total U.S. mobile search market in the first quarter of 2012, according to IgnitionOne’s Global Online Advertising Report

Smartphones still generate more traffic

The first and most obvious reason to why this is slightly surprising is that smartphones have been around for much longer and continue to have a significantly larger audience, although tablet adoption is projected to soar throughout 2012. In fact, the GlobalWebIndex expects tablets to claim an astonishing 14 percent of the global connected device traffic as we enter 2013, while mobile by then will make up an additional 18 percent.

During December 2011, mobiles accounted for 5.2 percent of all connected device traffic in the U.S. , according to comScore. As can be seen below, this is more than double the amount of traffic generated by tablets during that same period.

Mobile has higher CTRs

Furthermore, studies have shown that mobile ads have higher click-through rates compared to those of tablets and especially PCs. In fact, search ads on smartphones are 41 percent more likely to be clicked than ads designed for tablets. Compared to PCs, this number is as high as 76 percent.

*These figures are supported by data derived from Marin Software as well

The ultimate test

So what’s the catch? Conversion rates? BINGO.

Smartphones are performing poorly compared to tablets on the most important metric of all, suggests data from Marin Software. Search’s finest goal is to harvest demand (I’m not saying it’s the only one) and ads on smartphones are well under half as likely to do that as ads for tablets and PCs. This might explain mobile’s lower average cost per click. After all, how much is it worth getting customers in your store  if no one buys anything?

Mobile might not convert as well as tablets and this obviously explains why U.S. search marketers have chosen to allocate the large majority of their mobile device ad spend to tablets in Q1 2012. An important notion in this regard, however, is that smartphone ads might very well provide more bottom-line value than these figures give it credit for. Smartphone penetration has now exceeded 50 percent in the U.S., according to comScore, meaning that the lines between offline and online are rapidly vanishing. This convergence, suddenly making smartphones consumers’ favourite shopping companion, has by many analysts been highlighted as THE key trend for 2012.

If you’re a pure online player, desktop and tablet ads might provide higher value than mobile, but traditional retailers are unlikely to find any advertising platform more effective than mobile if executed right.

No related posts.

One would think that an activity worth millions of euros would have an established name after 10+ years in service, right? So, most people agree that you can call the general business activity “Search Engine Marketing” or shorter just [...]]]> One would think that an activity worth millions of euros would have an established name after 10+ years in service, right? So, most people agree that you can call the general business activity “Search Engine Marketing” or shorter just “Search Marketing”. So that becomes SEM as an abbreviation but you may want to stay away from SM unless you want to be in a bad semantic neighbourhood (S/M). Now please come to France and we will gladly add the term “référencement” to the lot.

The word “référencement” is so different from what you call SEM, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or SEA (Search Engine Advertising) or direct translations of those words into other languages that it may be useful to explain the origins of it. Watch out, though, the word may be trademarked by Jean-Pierre or Sylvain.

To understand the origin of the word we need to rewind to offline and look at retail marketing. Back to supermarkets and the retail systems which are of course part of a grand French tradition. In the retail economy the producer of goods will sell products to the retail chain and will dispute it’s positioning in the supermarket aisle. You actually don’t want to be at the top, rather in the middle to where the shoppers eye will be naturally oriented. In order to be in the category, the producer will need to be “referenced” with the retailer. Now transposed to the world of search engines, in order for the content producer to dispute his position in the search results he first needs to be “referenced” in the index. Hence the word “référencement” and the awkward translations into “search engine referencing” that you would sometimes run into.

With such a simple explanation and easily understable concept the term became versy strong at least in early years of Search Marketing. But then Paid Search came along and made it all impossible to communicate. Paid Search is “référencement payant” (19 chars) and SEO is “référencement naturel” (20 chars) or “référencement organique” (22 chars). Try fitting that into the menues of your website or write it in an sms!

So, today terminology is broken. The French will refer to Paid Search as SEM and the French-speaking Belgians will call it SEA (Search Engine Advertising) and then perhaps add the word “référencement” in the text.

Overall, it seems that the international abbreviations of “SEO” and “Search” are winning some ground in France but it may take some more years before we finally get it coined.

In the mean time, new agencies like my own will rather target terms like “agence search” (search agency) than stick to “référencement” like the somewhat older breed. Check out Google Insights:

Hey, Google say we are right in BDBL – can you beat that?

No related posts.

With more than 513 million internet users, according to the 29th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China by the CNNIC, China is by far the world’s largest online market. Although already being the undisputed global champion in [...]]]> With more than 513 million internet users, according to the 29^th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China by the CNNIC, China is by far the world’s largest online market. Although already being the undisputed global champion in terms of number of netizens, China’s online population just keeps growing due to the country’s massive scale.

Concurrently, the technological infrastructure is improving at the same pace as the increase of its user base, meaning that the internet, especially the usage of it, has become much more sophisticated and is continuously evolving – particularly exemplified by the Chinese’s embrace of online shopping. In fact, a September 2011 study of online buyers worldwide conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 86 percent of China’s nearly 200 million online shoppers considered themselves experts at ecommerce, compared to 70 percent in the UK and 72 percent in the US, notes eMarketer.

With an average of a staggering 8.4 online purchases per month by the vast country’s online buyers, China makes developed Western internet economies look like ecommerce newcomers. For comparison, online buyers in the US made an average of 5.2 purchases, while in France and Netherlands this number was as low as 2.6.

China’s scale, combined with its online population’s embrace of online shopping, present an unprecedented window of opportunity for international businesses. However, setting up a business and subsequently succeeding in a country where almost everything is different will prove challenging. Strict internet censorship, outspoken cultural differences and tedious bureaucratic processes are just some of the issues companies need to overcome when entering China’s online market, yet the financial potential seems to outweigh the obstacles likely to be encountered along the way.

WebCertain has compiled a guide/report on how to do business in China. Go to Global Central, request an invite and gain access to a wide range of SEM and social media insights.

No related posts.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the International Search Summit in Munich. One of the sessions was held by Managing Director of Yandex Europe, Bernard Lukey, who provided insights into the online Russian marketplace and, [...]]]> Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the International Search Summit in Munich. One of the sessions was held by Managing Director of Yandex Europe, Bernard Lukey, who provided insights into the online Russian marketplace and, needless to say, Yandex.

One slide after the other indicated that online has really started to pick up in the vast country. Although the “Runet”, as Russians refer to their online market, has witnessed immense growth in the past couple of years, growth rates are projected to gain further traction across most metrics as we move forward. As Bernard put it:

“The Runet might already be big, yet we’ve only seen the beginning of its significant potential”.

Now, you could be forgiven for wondering how accurate these figures are – after all, it’s in Yandex’s interest to promote Russian web growth – but a recent comScore report backs up the search engine’s assertions.

Earlier today, comScore released an overview of internet usage in Europe during the month of February. Russia continues to consolidate its position as Europe’s largest online market in terms of unique users, with more than 54.5 million unique visitors during the month – this represents a staggering increase of more than one million since December last year. For comparison, developed online markets like Germany, France and the UK have all stagnated due to market saturation.

Source: comScore Media Metrix

What’s going on in Italy?
Internet user stagnation has occurred in almost all individually surveyed European countries when comparing to the statistics comScore released for December, yet in this specific case there’s a clear exception to the rule. Interestingly, Italy has seen its internet audience skyrocketing with nearly 4 million internet newcomers over the course of a two-month period, making Russia’s user growth fade rather significantly.

I’ve checked comScore’s analyses on European internet usage back to September, and nothing seems to indicate that this spectacular growth is due to seasonal variation. Surprisingly, comScore doesn’t comment on it in the press release, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I haven’t got a clue of what might have caused this drastic shift over such short a period of time, so if you have any insights, please share them in the comments.

The UK continues to lead engagement
The UK continues to lead European engagement, with 36.7 hours spent on average in February. This is an increase of 1.1 hours from December, while the average hours across Europe have increased by 0.7 to stand at 28.2 hours. The U.K. is followed by Turkey and The Netherlands when combining both hours spent and number of page views.

While the overall increase of around 6 million unique visitors across Europe has been largely driven by a few countries, engagement appears to be on the rise in multiple markets across the region, relatively unaffected by market saturation. And surely, as most Europeans decide to spend more of their time online – and via multiple devices, making markets more fragmented – it becomes absolutely imperative to know the web browsing characteristics of your target audience and provide localised solutions accordingly.

No related posts.

The year 2011 was a good year for search engine marketing. As content became the king, some real impressive search engine optimized websites were developed. Many small and big players around the globe also poured into the domain of search [...]]]> The year 2011 was a good year for search engine marketing. As content became the king, some real impressive search engine optimized websites were developed. Many small and big players around the globe also poured into the domain of search engine marketing. Then in August 2011, the search engine giant Google came up with a new algorithm update and rolled out Panda internationally. This proved to be quite a challenge for websites that had a .com extension with either a sub domain or subdirectory structure. The problem was naturally more intense for companies that had presence in more than one country.

Multilingual and multi-country websites have similar content or translated similar content with perhaps some variations in terms of currency signs and title tags. So the combination of duplicate content and a directory/sub directory structure caused websites to get stuck in the Panda filter.

Google rolled out a solution for the problem that multiple language sites started facing due to Panda filter. This key was in the form of ‘hreflang’ and ‘canonical’ tags. This is Google’s way of telling site owners that they should use a regional subtag in their head tag for the website URL. This will help Google search crawlers to figure out the nature of content on each page and its relevance to a search performed. With these tags on websites, Google will comprehend that content on the site is truly intended for that region.

So how do the Hreflang and Canonical tags help?

Hreflang Tag

The hreflang attribute (hreflang: rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”) is very helpful for website owners in different parts of the world who need content translated in native languages to target a particular region. It can be easily used for multilingual websites using substantially the same content on all web pages with some differences in spellings – for instance pages in English for Canada, USA and Australia.

Hreflang can also be used by multiregional websites using fully translated content or substantially monolingual content that targets different regions – pages in English, French, German, Spanish, and other languages.

To use the hreflang tag for multiple language versions of a website, each language must use rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”. So, a page in German needs to have a rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” link to the English and Spanish version and the English and Spanish version must include a link pointing to the German site.

Google has expanded its support of the rel=”alternate” hreflang link element to take care of content that is translated or offered for more than one geographic region. The hreflang attribute mentions the language, optionally the country, and URLs of equivalent content. By stating these alternate URLs, Google’s goal is to be able to consolidate signals for such web pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs may be on the same website or on another domain.

Canonical Tag

The multilingual canonical tag (rel=”canonical”) tells Google that a certain URL is the preferred location and the most significant translated version of the content of the primary or general URL.

So multilingual canonical tag:

• Is used in tandem with hreflang
• May be used when web pages have the same content in same language but target multiple countries
• Designate the translation of content that gets indexed and returned to users

With canonical tag on web pages, when users enter content into search results, they are likely to see the URL that has relevant content in their preferred language. In other words, Google will use “canonical” signal to focus on preferred version of web pages in each search, while displaying the local URLs to users where appropriate. To quote an example, you can use the tag if you have the same product page in Spanish, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Spain, United Kingdom, and Germany.

To explain how the tags would work, here is an illustration for a hypothetical site abc.com

http://www.abc.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish

http://es-es.abc.com/ – is the version for users in Spain, in Spanish

http://es-uk.abc.com/ – is the version for users in United Kingdom, in Spanish

http://en.abc.com/ -     is the generic English language version

For all of these pages, the website owner can use the following markup to specify language and optionally the region:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”http://www.abc.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-ES” href=”http://es-es.abc.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-UK” href=”http://es-uk.abc.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”http://en.abc.com/” />

When a regional sub tag is specified, Google assumes that the website owner wants to target that region. Website owners need to remember that all of these annotations are to be used on a per-URL basis. They need to use the specific URL, not the homepage, for both of these link elements.

You can employ:

• Hreflang tags to segregate same language, different content or different languages on different URLs
• Canonical tags to bring together same language and same content under one URL

While canonical acknowledges that this is the same content, the Hreflang tag identifies which URL should be displayed in different sets of results.

And, Canonical + Hreflang = same content + different URL

Google understands that the content is the same, but displays the correct URL as per the Google domain search. The use of Hreflang and canonical tags applies to local domains as well as dot coms, though the examples stated by Google are based on dot coms. The canonical and Hreflang tags do not have any direct impact on ranking – canonicals do not share the link equity of the domestic market with the new markets targeted.

The obvious benefits of Hreflang –

• It helps Google to comprehend your site better and know that pages are related to each other.
• It helps Google discover new URLs that could be the ones that it missed before in searches.
• It creates more targeted URL for searchers: Different users can see a suitable, localized URL.

So start using the Hreflang tag – there are no reasons to be scared!

No related posts.

The Middle East is an area of interest and intrigue to many organisations. It is often seen as a region of promise and opportunity, however cultural differences, linguistic challenges and legal complexities can prove a stumbling block and a barrier [...]]]> The Middle East is an area of interest and intrigue to many organisations. It is often seen as a region of promise and opportunity, however cultural differences, linguistic challenges and legal complexities can prove a stumbling block and a barrier to entry. The Arab Spring in 2010-11 was not only a major world event but also an indication of the digital development of the region and the possibilities that exist there for international businesses.

Such is the importance of this region, that it is on the agenda for the upcoming International Search Summit London in May, where Lee Mancini of Dubai-based SEO agency Sekari will be offering insights into internet behaviour in the Middle East and advice for businesses targeting an Arabic audience. Here, Lee answers a few questions to introduce the topic and preview his session in London.

How has the internet market developed in the Middle East in recent years? What are its key characteristics?

There is no greater evidence of the growth of digital in the Middle East than with the occurrence of the Arab Spring. In only a few months this event completely altered the political landscape, a landscape which remained unchanged for previous decades.  The advent of digital mobile connections, the ability to connect and communicate (and organise) on social networks, the sheer power of the medium to communicate to millions broke the tipping point and took everyone by surprise. If such developments can topple governments, they can just as easily make or break brands. By mixing an incredibly young population (in Saudi 50% of the population are under the age of 25), and by simply giving them the ability to express themselves, you can see the new paradigm shift that has occurred in the Middle East.

In the Middle East, like the rest of the world, the economic downturn forced companies to have to take a deeper look at their marketing budgets and strive to increase their ROI – so, in some cases, digital became a more viable option then the traditional one page ad in a national newspaper.  Couple this with this undeniable growth in internet adoption and finally, after many years, the inflection point has been and gone.  Recent reports announce internet advertising spend to have reached 9% in the GCC (Gulf Corporation Council) and Levant, equating to $170m in 2011 out of a possible $2bn advertising market (Omnicom Media Group). It was 1% in 2009.  And that figure is expected to grow 30%-40% in 2012.

No related posts.

Social Media Examiner recently released its 4th annual Social Media Marketing Report. The 42-page report sets out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing based on more than 3,800 responses from marketers [...]]]> Social Media Examiner recently released its 4^th annual Social Media Marketing Report. The 42-page report sets out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing based on more than 3,800 responses from marketers across different markets (an overwhelming majority of respondents are based in the U.S., though). Here are five key findings from the report:

• The top two benefits of social media marketing are increased exposure and increased traffic, according to 85% and 69% of the respondents, respectively.




• 55% of respondents indicated improved search rankings as a benefit of social media marketing. Surprisingly, this is a decrease from 2011 where 62% viewed social media marketing as a means to improve search rankings. I look forward to seeing this figure in one year from now when we’ll be a lot wiser on the magnitude of SPYW.




• Gaining market insight through social media made its way into the top 3. The study found that B2B companies (68%) were significantly more likely than B2C (59%) to use social media for insight-gathering.




• Converting fans/followers into loyal ones doesn’t happen overnight. This may not come as any surprise, however, it’s supported by the report, which clearly indicates that the time invested makes a difference. 60% of those spending at least 6 hours a week found benefit in using social as a platform to acquire loyal customers, compared to just 46% of those spending 5 hours or less per week.




• 40% of survey respondents are using Google+. Being introduced less than a year ago, this is indeed impressive – but there’s still a long way to Facebook’s 92% penetration. With Google leveraging its search dominance to boost its own social network, the importance of having a business presence on Google+ can’t be underestimated.

These are just a few of the many interesting findings. Check it out for yourself – get the full report here or watch the video in which author, Michael A. Stelzner, provides an overview of the full report.

No related posts.

In my last post here on Multilingual Search I listed 10 brief takeaways from ISS Munich. At the summit, Senior Strategy Consultant at the GlobalWebIndex, Brett Petersen, presented some of the key findings from the company’s [...]]]> In my last post here on Multilingual Search I listed 10 brief takeaways from ISS Munich. At the summit, Senior Strategy Consultant at the GlobalWebIndex, Brett Petersen, presented some of the key findings from the company’s sixth wave of research into the global consumer adoption of the internet across 27 key markets. Their findings are based on 122K survey responses, making it the world’s most detailed on-going research project of its kind.

One of the insights shared by Brett was the fact that consumer expectations towards brands on social media seem to differ rather significantly between countries and regions, meaning that brands need to identify the social media characteristics of their audience and market before developing a global social strategy.

While the internet over the years has been hailed as this unifying force breaking down borders and cultural differences, the divergence in online usage patterns between regions and countries is becoming increasingly outspoken as the internet evolves, notes the GlobalWebIndex. This is indeed an interesting tendency worth keeping an eye on in the future.

So far, so good – now, let’s take a look at how user expectations actually vary between countries and regions.

Interaction

Across all markets, users are most likely to expect interaction with a brand when liking them on a social network – a motivational factor being particularly important in Latin American and Asian countries. Interaction here encompasses areas such as customer service and general conversations with brand representatives.

Source: GlobalWebIndex

Active contribution vs. passive consumption of content

When moving beyond interactions, the differences in consumer expectations towards brands on social networks become rather prevalent (see image above). Users in most markets prefer receiving content over contributing actively themselves, however, it’s somewhat surprising that some of the so-called early adopters of social media like the UK, Australia and France prefer contributing over passively consuming content.

Regarding content, emerging Asian markets like Indonesia, China and The Philippines expect branded quality content to a higher degree than the average. Quality content, however, is very open to subjective interpretation and is something which most certainly varies between markets as well. Some rather universal social media content tips, though, revolve around providing exclusivity to your fans, such as giving them access to new products prior to official launch. Whatever you can come up with that provides exclusivity and serves your overall business purpose is likely to have a positive effect on your social media efforts, regardless of where in the world you’re located.

Social

With the exception of China and to a little extent Indonesia, users across all markets are least likely to follow or like brand pages with the objective of sharing this brand engagement with their friends. This, however, is in contrast with research released today by eMarketer, suggesting that 22 percent of American Facebook users “like” a business/non-profit to demonstrate their support to others on the social network. eMarketer furthermore notes:

“A 2011 study from 8thBridge found that consumers most often “like” a retailer on Facebook because they purchased a product and liked it; they then used Facebook to provide a straightforward recommendation for friends to see.”

Fulfilment

Fulfilment, referring to offering added value services to fans, such as having a social e-commerce shop integrated on the brand profile or allowing fans to track a product delivery, is very surprisingly (at least to me) less of a motivational factor than contributing to, for example, businesses’ product development processes through filling out questionnaires or just giving inputs to product improvements without even being encouraged to do so.

The report doesn’t mention whether discounts and special offers go under the fulfilment category – in case it does, the findings stand in even greater contrast to those of eMarketer, who finds that discounts and special offers is the top reason for liking a brand page in the US.

Well, in contrast or not, I can only applaud the great work they are doing at the GlobalWebIndex, because although we live in a globalised world, it seems that localised solutions are needed more than ever.

No related posts.

Last week’s International Search Summit in Munich provided a wide range of in-depth quality sessions on international SEO, PPC and social media. Many of the recent developments and challenges that the international SEO community is currently [...]]]> Last week’s International Search Summit in Munich provided a wide range of in-depth quality sessions on international SEO, PPC and social media. Many of the recent developments and challenges that the international SEO community is currently facing were addressed at the summit – here are 10 key takeaways:

1. If you don’t already have a business presence on Google+, establish one

Google is cementing its position with all access points to the web increasingly becoming Google – a situation being termed “the rise of Googopoly” by the GlobalWebIndex. Chrome is now the leading browser in key growth markets such as India and Brazil, and Android is witnessing explosive growth and leads in almost all developed high value mobile markets. In addition, Google+ is already the second largest social network globally, and its importance for brands has only been propelled upwards by the heavy integration of Google+ in its search results. Appearing in the top SERPs on Google without a Google+ presence will become almost impossible.

2. Determine your target market’s level of brand interaction on social media before creating your social strategy

The GlobalWebIndex has identified four distinct tiers of consumer engagement with brands on social media.  Their findings show that consumer expectations to brands vary according to country, with emerging markets expecting a significant higher level of commitment and interaction from brands than the early adopters of social media, who are generally more passive. Identifying the characteristics of your audience and their expectations to brands on social media is the cornerstone in developing your global social strategy.

3. Link building approaches differ between markets and industries; hence, understand each market individually and then decide on which strategy to pursue

Some countries and industries have a much higher ratio of money links to brand links. For example, according to Bastian Grimm, 76 percent of links to the top 10-ranking sites in Germany for the keyword “Poker” were money links, whereas in the U.S. money links only accounted for 30 percent of the total number of links when using the same keyword.

Obviously, there are several other factors which need to be taken into consideration, such as where links should be coming from, i.e. blogs, forums, directories etc. The key notion here is: What might work in one market may very well prove insufficient in another.

4. Integrate “the holy trinity”

Integration of content, SEO and social media is at the core of online success. There is nothing revolutionary about this statement, however, tying these areas together through a holistic approach is becoming increasingly important.

5. Online reputation management – Identify potential risks and goals and bank appropriate response content

While managing your online reputation has never been more complex, the importance of doing it surely exceeds its complexity. In this regard, peer to peer recommendations online is a key factor in 50 percent of purchase decisions, according to Tracy Falke. Reputation management strategies should be proactive by identifying potential risks and banking appropriate response content to prevent potential crises from escalating, thus minimising the chances of losing brand equity.

6. Use Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, to claim your share of the growing Russian online market

The Russian online market will grow exponentially over the next couple of years and Yandex is the place where most Russian netizens go to. International marketers now have Yandex’s many advertising products available to them in English including PPC, bid management and web analytics tools.

7. Use canonical tags to combine same language and same content under one URL

Andy Atkins-Krueger has already posted an in-depth piece on John Mueller’s session about Google’s new language and country markup.

8. Use hreflang tags to separate same language, different content or different languages on different URLs (check out Andy’s article for further explanation)

9. Let users and not translators decide the keyword list and structure

Find your core keywords for any particular market and language and then set up a small campaign with these keywords in Broad Match. When there’s sufficient referrer data available to you, this can be used to refine and select keywords which have a closer match to the actual searches, ensuring a longer and more accurate long tail. The campaign can then be rolled out on a larger scale.

10. Test what can be most easily scaled between markets

Successful PPC campaigns always take local customs into consideration, however, hiring translators to find the right keywords and adapting everything will often prove a costly affair when targeting multiple markets. International marketers working on a tight budget should always try to identify areas which can be relatively easily replicated across different markets.

These are just some of the many great takeaways from ISS Munich. I’m sure I’ve missed out on quite a few, so please feel free to add in the comment box below.

Tickets are still available for the International Search Summit in London on 14^th May where Pierre Far from Google and Bas van den Beld, among others, will be speaking.

No related posts.

There’s no doubt that the search engine market is growing at a rapid rate around the globe as more and more people come online. comScore reports that more than 88 per cent of Internet users are outside the [...]]]> There’s no doubt that the search engine market is growing at a rapid rate around the globe as more and more people come online. comScore reports that more than 88 per cent of Internet users are outside the US.

Finally there’s a book on the market that addresses this compelling fact and it covers global pay-per-click, SEO, social media, mobile apps, multilingual web analytics and more.

The book “Global Search Engine Marketing: Fine Tuning Your International Search Engine Results” by Anne Kennedy, founder and managing partner of Beyond Ink and Kristján Már Hauksson, founder of Nordic eMarketing and fellow blogger here at Multilingual Search.

The first chapter titled “Can You Afford Not to Think Globally” addresses the sheer size of the global search engine market pointing out that in October 2011 there were 185 billion searches worldwide. That’s nearly 6 billion searches a day, 248+ million searches per hour or 4 million searches per minute. That’s a whole lotta searching going on! It also points out the one size does NOT fit all when doing business online worldwide.

In the second chapter “Common Territory: Search Marketing Without Borders” the authors discuss the commonalities in search engine marketing around the globe including mistakes like having a single English only website, using mechanical translations (my personal pet peeve) and using literal translations of your English keywords. The chapter also covers setting goals, keyword research, talent, localization and other common issues.

Other chapters are divided by countries or regions; China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, India, Nordic countries, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Brazil, South America, Mexico, Singapore, as well as Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Each country/regional chapter covers the markets online profile, search market share, common mistakes, ppc, seo, analytics, press releases and ends with a tips section. The search market share was very interesting showing Google’s domination in most countries but also their competition with Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia and Naver in South Korea.

The common mistakes section in each country was interesting as well with revelations like search marketers lumping countries in Asia together, Singapore, China and Hong Kong for example and using direct translations like “mobile phone” in Germany. The tips were also helpful including where to focus more on mobile or which countries have larger broadband penetration where you could use rich media.

There are two additional chapters “SEO/SEM Resources” that covers books, website tools, pr and conferences and “Google Countries and Domains” showing the country, language(s) and the domain of Google search in that country.

As a global search engine marketer with some experience I found this book enlightening and filled with wonderful nuggets of information. This is a book that you not only want to read but refer to quite often as you plan and execute your global search engine marketing strategy.

No related posts.

Google has revised the advice it is giving to owners of international websites with regard to using canonicals and hreflang tags. Just a month ago, the International Search Summit in San Jose was advised by the Google team on [...]]]> Google has revised the advice it is giving to owners of international websites with regard to using canonicals and hreflang tags. Just a month ago, the International Search Summit in San Jose was advised by the Google team on an approach to tagging global websites which comprised of combining canonical tags alongside hreflang tags in certain specific situations. That is no longer the key recommendation.

John Mueller, better known as johnmu in the forums, explained to International Search Summit delegates that, “We have seen that people are not correctly implementing the canonicals and hreflang tags together.” He went on to explain that canonicals and hreflang tags do still work together, but that consequences of setting this up incorrectly can be greater than doing nothing.

“In these circumstances, we’d rather people used the hreflang tags correctly,” he said.

“25% Of Geo-targeting Settings Are Incorrect!”

He also revealed that Google reckons that around 25% of Webmaster Central geo-targeting settings are incorrect, based on the locations from which websites are actually receiving visitors. It seems logical that what will follow is an additional form of advice or email which will suggest to users that they may be wise to check their geo-targeting settings — but that is not currently in place.

Users of Webmaster Central should seek advice to check that their settings are correct as this could be having a huge impact on the success of those sites. Of course, this also leaves Google in an awkward position since it can hardly go in and change those settings as that would completely destroy the value of giving people access to webmaster tools in the first place.

Current Canonical And Hreflang Advice

So the current advise on canonicals and hreflang tag attributes is as follows:

• Use canonical tags to combine same language and same content under one URL
• Use hreflang tags to separate same language, different content or different languages on different URLs

This is a lot clearer and will help those of us specialising in this area to give good implementable advice to our clients.

What Problem Does Hreflang Address?

During questioning, I asked John what was the problem that Google was trying to fix with the Hreflang tag attribute. His initial answer was relating to giving clear signals to Google and enabling them to see the connections between sites in a network, but on further discussion we agreed that this would most likely manifest itself to webmasters as a duplication problem where pages in Austria might become folded into pages targeted at Germany. This might mean the Austrians see pages from Germany even when there were perfectly adequate Austrian pages available.

Using the Hreflang tag would mean that even though the page title and snippet from the Germany page might be displayed, the visitor would be sent to the Austrian page and would see an Austrian URL.

Users should take care not to include currency symbols and address details in meta tags where this situation might arise.

A Better Implementation Is In The Works

Another way of understanding the Hreflang tag is that it performs a function similar to that which the geo-selector should perform if correctly set up, but then a great many are not correctly done use javascript, redirects and other functionality that really confuses the picture for search engines.

The good news is that Google is looking for a better solution in view of the difficulties this can cause for multi-language sites. This will most probably manifest itself as a form of sitemap or addition to the site map where the hreflang attributes are signalled — although by then it will probably won’t be a tag any more but rather a URL with country and language codes.

This is probably some weeks away!

Webmasters should also note that problems with the hreflang tag can be caused if the crawl doesn’t correctly separate out the pages enabling the hreflang tag to receive its weighting in the algorithm.

No related posts.

Yesterday’s standing room only international SEO session at SMX Munich featured Johannes Müller of Google Zurich and one of Google’s most popular spokespeople, known in the forums as “johnmu.” In English, he typically goes under the name “John” [...]]]> Yesterday’s standing room only international SEO session at SMX Munich featured Johannes Müller of Google Zurich and one of Google’s most popular spokespeople, known in the forums as “johnmu.” In English, he typically goes under the name “John” so I’ll continue for this piece with that anglicised version of his name.

John is a specialist on Google’s webmaster tools and has a lot to say on geo-targeting for international websites. He’s due to speak on Thursday this week at the International Search Summit Munich which takes place in the Hilton Munich Park Hotel immediately after the main show. John will also be speaking there on the management of multilingual websites — no doubt another packed session, though this time in English.

The Trouble With Geo-Targeting

The trouble with geo-targeting is that, whilst it’s relatively simple in practice, it does appear confusing at first sight. John understands this too and begins his presentation with a very simple structure to represent the building blocks of international and multilingual website management. He initially subdivides the subject into international, multilingual websites and those using hreflang though this structure soon falls apart as the audience throw in question upon question.

The first key point is that local websites in a region — such as German-speaking Switzerland — are presented higher in the rankings by Google where that helps to deliver greater relevance to the user. John says “Internationalisation is not difficult — but you do have to focus”.

Google tries algorithmically to decide based on geographic factors which will be the most relevant result. He gives the example of a search for “Bahn”. Meaning “railway”, you would expect information on Swiss railways if you searched for “Bahn” in Switzerland and on German rail if you searched in “Germany”. Google looks at things such as the IP address of the searcher and which of Google’s domains the search is carried out on to help in presenting the right results. So Google.de will tend to provide results which are “Germany” related unless there are other factors about the search that necessitate the information being pulled from outside the country.

“Don’t Worry About Duplicate Content”

John says that you shouldn’t worry about duplicate content as that is not penalised and Google has a very rational policy to dealing with it. He explains that Google understands that on mysite.fr you may have the same textual content that you have on my site.ca/fr and works to present the right result. He adds to a questioner in the room who doesn’t seem to be setting the right result that it is important to look at how well Google is able to crawl the site.

He goes on to stress the importance of having a unique URL per set of contents, whether thats targeted by country or language and stresses the importance of keeping a “clean” separation between countries. As he’s speaking German, he uses the word “sauber” for clean, a word which is uttered at least 20 times during the session with an implication that most of the problems international sites currently have are caused by their owners messing things up. International and global SEOs, you need to clean up your act!

We have presented the different factors which Google uses to determine the geography which should be associated with particular websites for many years. But Google recently introduced the Hreflang tag, which Susan Moskwa presented to the International Search Summit in San Jose.

How Geo-Targeting Became Muddled

The situation then became a little muddled in a main session at SMX San Jose when the importance of canonical tags and hreflang tags was discussed.

The whole situation has left many global SEOs at least puzzled. I have been receiving messages from large website owners saying that they can’t see how it works, how they should deploy and, worse, that when they deploy the recommendations, it has no effect whatsoever. Yet we mustn’t forget that Google is introducing this for a reason, even if the reason is somewhat opaque.

John moves the subject along by providing a list I’ve never seen before from any of the Google speakers on the subject and which helps to set the recent changes in a more understandable context.

Google’s Geo-targeting Factors Ranked By Importance

He lists the factors which Google uses to determine the correct geo-targeting of sites and pages as:-

• ccTLD
• webmaster tools
• server location
• Rel-alternate hreflang
• Other signals

This is a very useful list because it does a number of significant things. Firstly, it re-affirms the fact that ccTLDs continue to have the greatest level of important appearing at the top of the list and meaning that these continue to take precedence over the newer Hreflang tag option.

Webmaster tools is also shown in second place to ccTLDs — exactly where it should be in my opinion, but many newbies to international SEO continue to think of that as the first and most ideal option for Google. However, Hreflang tags have taken a slot above “Other signals”, which is now where “language” must reside.

Keep It Clean Guys

The usual question crops up of whether you can use subdomains or folders and John takes the opportunity to reiterate that it doesn’t really make much difference between the tool, “As long as you’re maintaining a “sauber” separation between countries and languages.

A questioner asks about the fact that the using the geo-settings in Webmaster Central, Google’s webmaster console, John explains something which many web masters had figured, namely that it typically takes around a month for Webmaster Central’s geo-settings to take full effect.

He is then asked if the regional location of a server within a country has any bearing on geo-targeting or location placement and confirms that this has no bearing whatsoever.

Whoops A Little Disagreement

Then a slide appears what says that “Language is not geo-targeting”, giving the example of French being a language which people could possibly wish to view in many parts of the world, not just in France.

I disagree with John on this one — and the example is misleading. It is possible to geo-target the speakers of single country languages such as Polish or Korean and for many this would be the least cost route to reach their audience, as well as potentially capturing emigrants from that country in other locations. Of course for the world languages such as French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and so on, then the point is true.

He continues by explaining that It is not possible to target regionally, for example there is no setting or method for targeting “Asia”.

Who’s At Fault For Landing On The Wrong Pages?

On Thursday, I will say to John that he did make me chuckle with his next point. Instead of automatically re-directing users who are “Landing on the wrong pages”, he suggests using a banner which says “Did you mean to visit Switzerland?” The reason it made me chuckle is because, by implication, it means that the users of Google or the publishers of sites in Google, are actually the ones who’re at fault for causing landings on incorrect pages. Google’s algorithm is not at fault! Nice one!

It is important to have just one language per page — and particular attention has to paid to templates that are not translated whilst the content is as this is a situation which presents Google with particularly tough challenges. Pages with small samples of keywords in another language can cause problems — such as a German site promoting Spanish properties — because Google tries to establish the main language on a page.

He didn’t explain, but the background to this is that the first thing Google has to do when it indexes a page of content is to decide what is the principal language of the page as the remaining indexing processes are highly language dependent. Getting the language wrong at the first pass will mean that things do not go well down the line.

When Google Definitely Does Ignore Meta Tags

Language meta tags and language code references or variables, Google ignores. They are not a good signal because so much content is copy pasted without these settings being adjusted.

Automatic translation causes significant problems for search engine-related content. I also had to smile when John included “Google Translate” in his description as one of the culprits — with the intention I guess of giving a balanced and fair message.

Text in pictures and flash is difficult to recognise, which is something SEOs have known about for years, but localised websites in multiple languages often forget the images and banners with the result that content appears incorrectly on the page. Google still does not do much with this kind of content — which means that for certain difficulties it provides an opportunity to present content which it would be inappropriate for Google to index. An example would be a message that said “Are you looking for Switzerland or Germany?”

Unicode Helps to Avoid Gobbledygook

Cross linking to different language versions is desirable, as this helps Google’s algorithms to see the complete network as such and give it its proper values. John also warned that Google doesn’t accept “accept-language” requests.

Unicode or UTF8 avoids characters which are specific to a particular language looking like gobbledygook and difficult for Google to recognise — noting that Google has algorithms to recongise differences such as “ü” or “ue”. For non-German speakers, the “ü” can be correctly replaced with the “ue” — some years ago Google did not recognise these two versions as identical producing different sets of results.

John stressed the point that the Hreflang tag is a page level signal — not site level. It also has nothing to do with ranking but means that the pages are “swapped” in the results to show the right content at the right time to the right user.

John Müller will be speaking at the InternationalSearchSummit.com on Thursday of this week.

No related posts.

Geo-targeting is always a popular subject at International Search Summit events – its importance for multilingual websites cannot be disputed yet achieving effective geo-targeting across multiple locales and languages proves a challenge for many.

Google’s hreflang markup has been developed to [...]]]> Geo-targeting is always a popular subject at International Search Summit events – its importance for multilingual websites cannot be disputed yet achieving effective geo-targeting across multiple locales and languages proves a challenge for many.

Google’s hreflang markup has been developed to improve the targeting of multilingual websites and give website owners the ability to tell Google exactly who should be seeing which content.

Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst, will be speaking on the topic at the International Search Summit London on 14th May, where he will be explaining how and when to use the markup, and answering delegates questions.

Ahead of the Summit, for which the Early Bird rates expire on Friday, 30th March, Pierre answered a few questions to give some insight into Google’s thinking behind it and how it will improve things for international marketers.

Pierre, how has the introduction of the rel=”alternate” hreflang markup changed the handling of international content on websites?

The aim of rel-alternate-hreflang is to help us show the most relevant page on your site to our searchers based on language and, optionally, country. Forming page-level relationships like this goes well beyond simply geotargeting whole sites to specific countries, and allows for smarter handling.

The first iteration of rel-alternate-hreflang annotations, launched in 2010, communicated to our algorithms that two (or more) pages are identical (same language without geographic specificity) even if the template surrounding the content is in a different language.

We recently improved our support for the annotations to include content in different languages and, optionally, specific countries the pages are targeting. This improvement allows us to do a better job at showing the most appropriate page from multinational sites in our search results.

Why should global organisations implement it on their websites?
Global organizations have customers worldwide and may have separate content targeting each country specifically. With rel-alternate-hreflang annotations, our algorithms will understand the language and geographic relevance of the content better and so we can try to connect our searchers with the most appropriate language and country page the global organization offer.

To take a simple example, suppose a site has two pages in German, one targeting users in Germany and the other for users in Switzerland. With the new rel-alternate-hreflang annotations, the webmaster can hint to our algorithms which page targets users in Germany and is best shown to searchers on google.de, and which equivalent page targets users in Switzerland and is best shown to searchers on google.ch.

Are there any scenarios where it isn’t applicable, or effective?
The use case for rel-alternate-hreflang annotations is quite specific: they describe relationships between pages based on language, and optionally at a country level, only.

What do you see as the major challenges for organisations targeting a multilingual audience? And what area of search do you see as most important for international marketers in 2012?
I think the biggest challenge is also the biggest opportunity and it’s what it has been always: Making sure that customers worldwide are getting useful content relevant to their locality. Good marketers already know this and work hard to deliver, and with rel-alternate-hreflang, they can help us surface the most relevant content they have for their users when they search on Google.

One tip to help webmasters of multilingual and multinational sites: Test your important keywords in the relevant Google search property. For example, if you are targeting French speakers in Switzerland, go to google.ch and set the language to French and try your queries. Do the search results return the content you were expecting? If not, ask yourself if you have content specifically targeting such searchers. If not, perhaps create such content, and either way, consider setting up rel-alternate-hreflang annotations.

Tickets for the International Search Summit London, which is running as part of SMX London, are on sale, with early bird rates expiring on Friday 30th March. For more details and the full agenda, visit www.internationalsearchsummit.com/london

No related posts.

The survey on the international impact of Google Places can be filled out here.

In February, Google sent out a list of 40 [...]]]> The survey on the international impact of Google Places can be filled out here.

In February, Google sent out a list of 40 algorithm updates – a new record for the company’s monthly series on search quality. While much immediate attention has been given to Panda 3.3 and link valuation in the SEO community, Google’s announcement of its “Venice” update – impacting on local search – has so far gone relatively unnoticed.

Local search is unquestionably one of the most interesting areas in SEO today, and while local experts have speculated the future direction and impact of local search, it’s still unclear exactly where we’re headed.

Google Places has had a major impact on local search and for some industries and businesses, developing an effective local search strategy is absolutely vital to online as well as offline success. Although this seems to be widely recognised, so far information on the international impact of Google Places has been very limited.

WebCertain has now taken the first steps in exploring the current and projected future impact of Google Places in international markets through this survey. All participants will get a free copy of the final report, as well as the chance to win passes for an International Search Summit event, if responding before 1st April.

Andy Atkins-Krueger will be speaking about the international impact of Google Places at the International Search Summit @ SMX Munich on March 29^th.

No related posts.

In a press release earlier today, Yandex announced that it now offers search refiners, helping users to instantly find the results they are looking for as they type in a query. This is [...]]]> In a press release earlier today, Yandex announced that it now offers search refiners, helping users to instantly find the results they are looking for as they type in a query. This is a response to unspecified queries, which currently represent about 20 percent of all searches on the Russian search engine, Yandex explains.

The new functionality – best described as Yandex’s equivalent to Google Suggest – is powered by the company’s own proprietary technology, Spectrum, enabling its search engine to understand and determine user intent, thus increasing SERP relevance. In this regard, returning unbiased and relevant results should always be the core objective of a search engine no matter how big a fish you are, however, somewhere along the line it appears someone has forgotten its original “Don’t Be Evil” mantra. Well, that’s another story.

As can be seen, Yandex includes 10 suggestions to unspecified queries based on search term popularity, as compared to Google’s four. Whereas Google’s 4-pack allows for displaying all search results, top results on Yandex are partly or fully hidden.

In the press release, the Russian search giant further disclosed that it intends to launch other intent-based products in the near future, as this is a key priority to the company in 2012. How Yandex will move forward with this will be interesting to see. Do you dare guessing what’s coming next?

No related posts.