Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · International and multilingual sites
Gary Illyes said Google segments text in languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, into words using statistical models built from web content in that language, and applies exactly the same segmentation to queries so they can match the index (said at the event, not in Google's docs). Google's internationalisation talk said Google usually understands query words written with or without diacritics, consistent with a 2006 Google blog post, and usually understands non-English words typed 'in English', probably meaning romanised spellings (not in Google's docs). A community talk on Persian and Arabic showed that letters which look identical can be different Unicode characters (such as the Arabic and Persian forms of the letter ye), so a searcher may type one variant while a site uses another, and keyword data for one term splits across the variants (a community observation, undocumented). Day 3's query understanding talk filled in the details: Google generally treats spellings with and without diacritics as synonyms behind the scenes (a German ü written as ü, as ue or without the dots), which the 2006 post supports, but sometimes gets variants wrong, so search a variant to check before picking one spelling. Users expect content in the form they search with, Latin letters or the local script, and some, such as Hindi users, use both; Google's advice was to focus on what users actually search for rather than on what the search engine does (said at the event, not in Google's docs). Thai was named again as a language whose lack of spaces between words complicates query understanding. A second recording covered the rest of that talk: mixing right-to-left and left-to-right scripts can scramble the display order of titles, product names and URLs, and users may type the same Persian query in Persian script or in Latin letters with the same intent, as Google's 2023 post on multilingual searches describes for Hindi, so keyword research should ask how people actually type, especially on mobile. The presenter observed that bought links and paid editorial content still visibly influence competitive Persian, Turkish and Arabic results (an observation, stressed as not a recommendation), that Persian offers far fewer natural link opportunities, and that AI answers to Persian queries cite English sources where Persian content is thin; Google's October 2023 spam update improved its coverage per language. The talk concluded that multilingual SEO is more than translation: script, language behaviour and market maturity matter. Author’s view: the October 2023 update names neither Persian nor Arabic and covers cloaking, hacked, auto-generated and scraped spam, not link spam, so it does not show that the bought links seen working there were addressed.
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Text in languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, would end up in the index as long strings that might never be searched for, so Google segments it into words with statistical models built from other web content in that language.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 2, 11:30 · Understanding what's on a pageEvidence transcript
For languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, Google uses exactly the same word segmentation when indexing a page as when interpreting the user's query, because otherwise the query could not be matched against the index.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 2, 11:30 · Understanding what's on a pageEvidence transcript
Google usually understands non-English words typed 'in English' (probably meaning romanised, Latin-letter spellings, which the speaker did not spell out); the speaker said this belongs to query interpretation, a Day 3 (serving) subject.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationEvidence transcript
Google usually understands a query word whether it is written with or without diacritics (accents).
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationEvidence transcript
A community talk, presented on its author's behalf by a colleague, was about multilingual SEO for languages written in non-Latin scripts, such as Persian and Arabic.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Arabic and Persian contain letters that look identical to users but are different characters to software, with different Unicode code points; the example given was the letter ye, which has an Arabic and a Persian form.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Because Arabic and Persian lookalike letters have different code points, a searcher may type one variant of a word while a website's text uses the other.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Lookalike Arabic and Persian character variants cause problems for data analysis and keyword research: data for one term can be split across the variants, which makes keyword research less accurate.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Persian and Arabic are written right to left and English left to right, so a title that mixes the two scripts can display in a confusing, unpredictable order even when its content is correct.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-12glossary term Bidirectional text
The display problem of mixing right-to-left and left-to-right text also affects product titles and URLs, the presenter of the non-Latin-script talk said, showing an example from a large Iranian e-commerce site.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-12glossary term Bidirectional text
Users of non-Latin-script languages do not always search in their own script: the same Persian query may be typed in Persian script or in Latin letters, with the same intent and the same expected results.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-11glossary term Transliterated queries
Keyword research for non-Latin-script languages should ask how people actually type and spell in local search, not only what the right keyword is, because switching keyboards is inconvenient, especially when typing on mobile.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
The presenter of the non-Latin-script talk said that in competitive Persian, Turkish and Arabic searches, bought backlinks and paid editorial content still visibly influence rankings and are widespread (an observation; no data was shown); the presenter stressed this described the situation and was not a recommendation.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
The presenter of the non-Latin-script talk said Google announced in October 2023 that it had improved its spam-detection coverage for languages: the spam policy was global, but the coverage improvement was language-specific.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
The presenter of the non-Latin-script talk said Persian offers far fewer natural link opportunities than English, with fewer publications, niche blogs and websites.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
For SEO in languages such as Persian, the presenter of the non-Latin-script talk advised accepting different competitive dynamics and basing strategy on the actual maturity of that language's market, not only on the global policy.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Google search features often launch in some languages or countries first and expand later (the presenter's example was site names, launched in several languages and then extended to all languages in 2023), so comparisons of performance across languages and countries should not assume a feature is live everywhere at once.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
In the presenter's observation, AI answers to Persian queries are written in Persian but cite some English sources; the presenter explained that Persian content on a topic is often thinner, of lower quality or less relevant, so the systems retrieve from languages with better content, which the presenter called cross-lingual retrieval.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
The non-Latin-script talk concluded that multilingual SEO is not just translation: script, language behaviour and market maturity also matter, and basic SEO tactics, though the same everywhere, must be fitted to each market.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
Google's post on multilingual searches (8 September 2023) says that, because of typing difficulty on some keyboards, a person in India might search in Hindi using Latin rather than Devanagari characters and want and receive Hindi results written either way.
Publisher Search Central blog (8 September 2023)Annotates Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: Internationalisation
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-11glossary term Transliterated queries
For Persian and Arabic keyword research, look up each lookalike-character spelling of a term separately and add up the volumes, and check which variant the site's own content uses.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: Internationalisation
The October 2023 spam update cited in the non-Latin-script talk names neither Persian nor Arabic (only 'other languages') and lists cloaking, hacked, auto-generated and scraped spam, not link spam, so it does not show that the bought links the presenter saw working in Persian or Arabic search were addressed.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: Internationalisation
Google's summary slide on query understanding noted that some languages do not use spaces between words, which complicates query understanding.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google named Thai as a language that makes query understanding more complex because it does not separate words with spaces; the speaker added, hedging with 'apparently', that Thai uses spaces to separate sentences.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Google generally treats spellings with and without diacritics as synonyms behind the scenes, for example a German 'ü' written as 'ü', as 'ue' or left out.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-11
Google sometimes gets diacritic variants wrong, so it is worth searching to see whether Google understands a variant; if it does, pick one spelling and use it.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Google's recommendation for diacritics, non-English words, product names and spelling variants is to focus first on what users actually search for.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-11
Users expect content written the way they search: in some languages they search in Latin characters, in others in the local script, and Hindi users, for example, search both in Hindi and in Latin letters.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-11
Google said focusing on what users actually do makes more sense than trying to match what the search engine does.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Spelling variants need no artificial focus: users are often fine finding one version of a word on one page and another version elsewhere.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
A 2006 Search Central blog post says Google considers pages with and without accents for a query word (México and Mexico), and that which accented characters count as equivalent depends on the searcher's interface language.
Publisher Search Central blog (1 September 2006)Annotates Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queries
For audiences that type the same words in two scripts or spellings (Hindi in Devanagari and in Latin letters, German with and without umlauts), check which forms appear in Search Console's queries and use those forms in headings and key text.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queries
Used byrequirement DEV-INT-11
Users of non-Latin-script languages do not always search in their own script: the same Persian query may be typed in Persian script or in Latin letters, with the same intent and the same expected results.
Google usually understands non-English words typed 'in English' (probably meaning romanised, Latin-letter spellings, which the speaker did not spell out); the speaker said this belongs to query interpretation, a Day 3 (serving) subject.
In the presenter's observation, AI answers to Persian queries are written in Persian but cite some English sources; the presenter explained that Persian content on a topic is often thinner, of lower quality or less relevant, so the systems retrieve from languages with better content, which the presenter called cross-lingual retrieval.
Users often assume AI is all-knowing and borderless, but AI is still language-dependent: if an AI answer is synthesized from the top results, a query in another language draws on a totally different set of data.
Google named Thai as a language that makes query understanding more complex because it does not separate words with spaces; the speaker added, hedging with 'apparently', that Thai uses spaces to separate sentences.
Text in languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, would end up in the index as long strings that might never be searched for, so Google segments it into words with statistical models built from other web content in that language.
Google's query processing deliberately mirrors indexing: a query is transformed into something that can be matched against the index, and stop word removal is part of that transformation.
For languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, Google uses exactly the same word segmentation when indexing a page as when interpreting the user's query, because otherwise the query could not be matched against the index.
Google generally treats spellings with and without diacritics as synonyms behind the scenes, for example a German 'ü' written as 'ü', as 'ue' or left out.
Google usually understands a query word whether it is written with or without diacritics (accents).
Users expect content written the way they search: in some languages they search in Latin characters, in others in the local script, and Hindi users, for example, search both in Hindi and in Latin letters.
Google usually understands non-English words typed 'in English' (probably meaning romanised, Latin-letter spellings, which the speaker did not spell out); the speaker said this belongs to query interpretation, a Day 3 (serving) subject.
A search query is broken into words with the same segmenter or tokenizer that Google used to build the index.
For languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, Google uses exactly the same word segmentation when indexing a page as when interpreting the user's query, because otherwise the query could not be matched against the index.
Google's summary slide on query understanding noted that some languages do not use spaces between words, which complicates query understanding.
Text in languages written without spaces, such as Thai and Chinese, would end up in the index as long strings that might never be searched for, so Google segments it into words with statistical models built from other web content in that language.
Rests on 10 claims, 6 of them in this topic
Mark the text direction of right-to-left and mixed-script titles, product names and URLs
Rests on 2 claims, 2 of them in this topic