Ask in Italian and you get an Italian shaped answer.
The same question in two languages returns two different sets of businesses. Only one of them can include you.
The short answer
An assistant asked something in Italian answers largely from material written in Italian. Ask the same thing in English and a different set of businesses comes back.
If everything you publish is in one language, you exist inside one of those answers and are absent from the others, however good your site is.
This is not a trick to exploit. It is a reason to write properly in the languages your customers actually use, which for most businesses is fewer than they fear and more than one.
Translation and writing are not the same job
A page put through a translator carries the sentence shapes of the language it came from. A reader notices by the second line, and a machine summarising your business inherits whatever awkwardness is in there.
Written properly in each language, by somebody who read what you offer, the same page competes in every one of them.
Which languages are actually worth publishing
The one your customers speak, the one they search in when they are elsewhere, and no more than that. Every published language is one somebody has to keep true, and a page describing last year's prices does more harm in a second language than it did in the first.
What an assistant needs from a small site
Plain answers to the questions customers ask, in the words they use, on pages that say who you are and where. Consistent details everywhere a machine can read them. Nothing exotic, and most of it is work a search engine rewards anyway.
Where this studio sits
This site is published in three languages and none is a machine copy of another, so we can recommend doing it without hedging. The clients whose numbers we publish are Albanian. Italian work here is newer and we say so rather than dressing it up.
Questions worth asking
Does this apply to Google as well?
Broadly yes, and it has for years. What changed is that an assistant returns a handful of names rather than a page of links, so being outside the set costs more than being on page two did.
Is one very good language better than three weak ones?
Almost always, yes. Three half maintained languages is three ways to look unattended. Add the second only when you can keep it true.
Which language should a business near the border publish?
Whichever one the customers who pay you actually search in, and you should check that rather than assume it. Sometimes it is not the language spoken in the shop.
Do I need a separate site per language?
No, and you should not. One site with proper language versions and the right tags linking them is simpler to keep true and reads as one business rather than three.
How do I test this?
Ask an assistant the same question twice, once in each language, and compare who gets named. The difference is usually immediate.
Ask an assistant about your trade in two languages and compare the names it returns. Send us both. Get a free audit.
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