Your company may have translated and designed the best foreign language web site for its international clients, but no one will visit your site if they don't know how to find it. The best, and least expensive, way to attract worldwide traffic is to register your site with both English and foreign-language search engines and directories.
What is the difference between a search engine and a directory? A search engine, such as Alta Vista, uses an algorithm called a "spider" (which is also called a "robot" or a "crawler") to look at your web site and store the information it gathers in the search engine's catalog. People then search through this catalog to locate your web site. On the other hand, directories use human beings to review your site or its description to decide whether to list your site in the directory.
Registering your site with foreign search engines and directories will greatly increase its traffic and the likelihood of its success as a sales tool.
The major search engines, many of whom also have regionalized versions in other languages, include: AOL Search, Alta Vista, Excite, FAST Search, Go/Infoseek, Google, HotBot, Lycos, MSN Search, Northern Light, Open Directory, Snap, WebCrawler, and Yahoo.
Major search engines based in the U.S. develop regional versions of their sites so that they appeal to visitors in certain foreign countries or regions of the world. For example, search engines can regionalize their interfaces by translating their instruction text into Japanese to appeal to visitors from Japan. Another method that search engines use to regionalize their content further is by using "domain filters" that accept information for sites whose URLs contain country-specific extensions, such as ".mx" for Mexico, ".ru" for Russia, etc. Still another method is the use of specially-designed "spiders" to search web sites with content in targeted languages.
In addition to major search engines with regional editions, many countries originate their own search engines with country-specific content.
Some of the top regional or country-specific foreign-language search engines and directories are:
ASIA:
China -
SurfChina - http://www.surfchina.com
Yahoo Chinese - http://chinese.yahoo.com
Japan -
Excite Japan - http://jp.excite.com
Goo - http://www.goo.ne.jp
Korea -
Yahoo Korea - http://www.yahoo.co.kr
Keimyung - http://www.keimyung.ac.kr
EUROPE:
Germany -
Web.de - http://web.de
Altavista Germany - http://www.altavista.de
France -
Ecila - http://www.ecila.fr
Voila France - http://www.voila.fr
Italy -
Virgilio - http://www.virgilio.it
Arianna - http://www.arianna.it
Russia -
Rambler - http://www.rambler.ru
Yandex - http://www.yandex.ru
Spain -
Olé - http://www.ole.com
UK -
SearchUK - http://www.searchuk.com
UK Plus - http://www.ukplus.co.uk
LATIN AMERICA:
Argentina -
Donde - http://www.donde.com.ar
Grippo - http://www.grippo.com
Brazil -
Cade - http://www.cade.com.br
Colombia -
Ubicar - http://www.ubicar.com
Mexico -
Iguana - http://www.iguana.com.mx
Explore-Mex - http://www.explore-mex.com
Peru -
PeruOnline - http://www.peruonline.com
To identify other foreign search engines and directories, go to:
- http://www.allsearchengines.com/foreign.html, or
- http://www.searchenginecolossus.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Myriam Telles mdtelles@ix.netcom.com owns Aim for Success, an agency providing original content, marketing and public relations services in English, Spanish and Chinese to web sites and brick-and-mortar companies. She is also Head Writer of the Global Communicator, an electronic newsletter that covers international web site creation, marketing, translation, localization and news. Global Communicator is published by Global Language Solutions http://www.globallanguages.com which is a premier web site translation and localization company.
