January 6, 2014

Google Translate Could be Hurting Your Ranking

Matt Cutts, the head of the Web Spam team at Google, announced that websites that are translated dynamically with Google translate do not help webmasters increase their search engine rank. These translations are not indexed or stored by Google thus have no chance of appearing in a search. Even more shocking was that Cutts said that sites that are auto-translated may appear to Google as spam, risking delisting from the search rankings. Further to the point, Cutts stated that Google would rather have a webmaster translate their site using a proper localization strategy because it is more easily read by human beings and that Google Translate often produces results that that are contrary to Google’s terms of service.

If you do business in different locales, we urge you to properly translate your website. This could mean the difference between major gains in market share or the headaches caused by a poor ranking website.