Google Plus and Large Multiple-Language Website

[InsightEnterprises]

I work for a corporation who has about 30 international versions of their website. I have an internal question asking me if we (our company) benefits (SEO wise) more from having multiple Google Plus pages or just one. I'm not familiar with how/if Google translates their pages but I'm quite sure someone here is!

Is it better to have a Google Plus page for each language or to have one for all languages? We have different websites for each country if that helps.

[wissamdandan]

business wise, is each site (country tld) controlled by a different business entity in that region or country ?

[InsightEnterprises]

No, it's all one business to my knowledge, just different sub-domains and some tld's per country.

This is a VERY difficult question to find information on, I've been looking for hours, touched IRC, asked on Google+ (my SEO circle)...

Basically you can create an account in any language and change the language on your account. I've have found that Google allows for multiple +1 buttons on one page to share content with for multi-language websites because apparently the Google+ URL is different for each language, but I have not found any recommendations for best practices on this subject at all.

My first assumption is that a user would probably like to view a Google+ Page in his/her preferred language which means they would probably be asked that question upon arrival on the page, which they are not... so if there was only one Page for multiple languages, wouldn't the user have the ability to view a page in his/her preferred language? I'm looking for some indicators I can make a educated inference with. This is one.. Any thoughts on some others?

[wissamdandan]

To tell you the truth, i m guessing like you are .

but the most important thing is driven by the audience/user. if they have a huge audience in Dubai for example then having a Google Plus page in arabic is definitely the way to go. but you will go ahead and face another problem is the adoption rate of google + in that region or language.

[InsightEnterprises]

Good point about the rate of adoption.

A user can set their preferred language(s) in Google's settings so this dispels my theory that some sort of question would need to be asked. Man this is a tough one. I might just create a test page to figure it out. Thanks!

[InsightEnterprises]

Ok. After thoroughly researching this topic I have come to the conclusion, what I initially thought, that a Google+ Page for each website/language is not only the best practice, but the only way. I came to this conclusion by finally determining that Google only allows one Google+ Page per website (or business location), so I know it’s not technically possible to have one Google+ Profile/Page for multiple websites and in our case, multiple languages/physical business locations.

So the best course of action is to create a separate Google+ Page for each website/location. AND since there is not place on the Google+ Page admin area to change the language (it’s only on the Account level), it appears as though you will need to have a different Google Account for each location as well.

Answered my own question, I hope this helps someone!

[wissamdandan]

Lol let me flag your answer as the best answer then

[gfiorelli1]

One of the best things of Google+ are the Circles, hence why don't use them in order to segment your audience.

30 Circles as are the countries targeted.

Surely that is easier to admin than having 30 Google+ Business Profiles.

[gfiorelli1]

Absolutely not!

That's simply crazy!

Check my answer below.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Zach - Gianlucca provided you with a great solution. Has your question been answered, or do you need any clarification on this issue? Please let us know, thanks!

[GeertB]

We have a similar issue (Belgium has 3 official languages - Dutch, French and German (Dutch and French are the main languages spoken)).

I prefer that when I follow a Google+ company/brandpage, I don't want to see updates from that company/brand in a non-native language of myself. Therefore at the moment, we create a Dutch Google+ page AND a seperate French Google+ page. At the moment Google+ isn't able to segment updates to country or language, so seperate pages for different countries and languages would be a current best practice imo.

Facebook had a similar approach at first but changed that approach which means you can segment Facebook company/brand updates to specific languages. Fans of your page who's setttings are in dutch, will only see the dutch updates the page publishes and fans who's settings are set to french, will only see the french updates.

I would think that Google+ will eventually evolve into something similar and therefore multiple Google+ pages for different languages will become obsolete. The question is when? When Google decides to add this functionality, many Google+ pages will have to get merged together or deleted.

Using Circles is one way of dealing with this problem. But for us, it is very difficult to determine if a person's main language is either french or dutch. Other solutions are always welcome!

[gfiorelli1]

I wonder why nobody remembers that Google+ has one great features that makes everything about targeting really simple: Circles.

You can have just one business page for your site and that segment your different users in country/language specific circles so to update in different languages notifying the update circle by circle. Doing so, the Circles targeting others languages/countries won't see it.

Splitting Google Plus presence is not the best because you are dispersing the power the business page may have.

The only exception, IMHO, is when the business as a strong local presence in another market, hence it can be better to give to it a strong Google Plus identity too.