Google adds documentation on translated search results and ad networks with Google Translate

Google added two new help documents to the Google Search developer area around translated search results and how to enable your ad network to work with Google-translated web pages.

Translated Google search results

The translated results help document explains how Google may automatically translate the search result snippets from the language it was written in, to the language of the Google Search results page. Google said “sometimes Google may translate the title link and snippet of a search result for results that aren’t in the language of the search query.”

Google said it does this because “a translated result is a Google Search feature that enables users to view results from other languages in their language, and can help publishers reach a larger audience.”

These translated results work for Indonesian, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu languages at the time this story was published. It should be only available on mobile devices with any browser that supports Google Search.

After the user clicks the translated search result link, Google said that “all further user interaction with the page is through Google Translate.” Google said you can opt-out of this through a meta robots tag notranslate. Here are more details on opting in or out of translated results.

Ad networks with Google Translate

If Google will be automatically translating your web pages using Google Translate and you do not opt-out of that behavior, you will want to make sure that if you have ads on those pages, that the ads load properly. This new help document discusses how to enable your ad network to work with translation-related Google Search features. It is a pretty technical document, so make sure to share it with your developers and engineers.

Why we care. If you prefer that Google does not translate your search result snippets, you can now opt-out of it. You can even opt-in, if you want Google to translate those results. Plus, if you want to ensure your ads load with Google Translate, Google now has clear documentation on how to make that work.

Postscript: A day later, Google announced this in a blog post showcasing how this may look for searchers and users with the screenshot below.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.