In a hangout, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about using mixed languages on one page.
For example, their international school in Japan caters to Japanese and non-Japanese families. However, they keep most of the information on their homepage in English.
Then, they add support on the page in Japanese as well.
When they had the pages separate, it made the community’s parents feel separate. Since communication in real life is mixed language, they thought that having the homepage reflect this felt more natural.
Their question was: are they punished in search if a page is intentionally in a mixed language?
John explained that he wouldn’t necessarily say that a page is punished in a case like this. But, they do try to understand what the primary languages of a page are.
And this helps Google to understand which kinds of queries they should be able to show this page for.
John believes that doing this is kind of tricky in a case like this. Google can understand when there are multiple languages on pages too, it just makes it a lot easier for them to really be clear that if someone is searching in English, this is the right page to show.
John could imagine for something like a homepage, perhaps it makes sense to have that language mixed. Or a slight mix.
If you have one homepage that is primarily in English, then perhaps they could include some elements in Japanese. If they have another version that’s primarily Japanese, including some elements in English is fine too.
But, it helps Google to really understand that, for the most part, this is an English page. And if someone is searching in English for a specific kind of international school in Japan, then it makes sense for Google to say “Well, here’s an English piece of content that they know fits their needs. And this matches the queries that you gave us.”
From that perspective, John wouldn’t necessarily say that the page is punished, but it makes it a lot harder for Google’s systems to figure out how to rank that page properly.
One of the things that you can think about here, though, is looking in Search Console about what queries are going to your website or for your homepage.
And then, you can think about which of these queries may be affected if Google didn’t understand the language properly. And it could very well be that if most people are searching for your name, or your brand, or your school, then perhaps this would not be affected at all.
On the other hand, if most people are searching for broader queries, more generic queries, then John imagines that this would be a bit harder to appear in search just because they are not sure if the homepage is actually in that language of that query.
This happens at approximately the 30:33 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 30:33
Is there a best practice for pages with mixed language use. For example, our international school in Japan caters to Japanese and non-Japanese families.
While we keep most of the information on our homepage in English, we add support on the page in Japanese as well. When we had the pages separate, it made the community’s parents feel separate.
Since communication in real life is a mixed language, having the homepage reflect that felt more natural. Are we punished in search if a page is intentionally mixed language?
John (Answer) 31:03
So I wouldn’t necessarily say that a page is punished in a case like that. But we do try to understand what the primary languages of a page are and that helps us to understand for which kinds of queries we would be able to show this page.
So that, I think, is kind of tricky in a case like this. We can understand when there are multiple languages on a page too, it just makes it a lot easier for us to really be clear that if someone is searching in English, this is the right page to show through.
So I could imagine for something like a homepage, maybe it makes sense to have that mix or a slight mix. Like if you have one homepage as primary English, then maybe include some elements in Japanese. If you have another version that’s primarily Japanese, some elements in English are fine. But it helps us to really understand that, for the most part, this is an English page.
And if someone is searching in English for a specific kind of international school in Japan, then it makes sense for us to say, well, here’s an English piece of content that we know fits your needs. And that matches the queries that you gave us. So from that point of view, I wouldn’t necessarily say that the page is punished, but it makes it a lot harder for our systems to figure out how to rank that page properly.
One of the things you can think about here, though, is looking in Search Console, what queries are going to your website or for your homepage, and think about which of these queries might be affected if Google didn’t understand the language properly. And it could well be that if most people are searching for your name, for your brand of your school, essentially, then probably that would not be affected at all.
On the other hand, if most people are searching for broader queries, more generic queries, kind of, I don’t know, almost like a sentence, that would match something on your homepage, then I could imagine that would be a little bit harder for you to appear in search results for, just because we’re not sure if your homepage is actually in that language of that query. So that’s kind of my approach there.
One thing you could also do, if you’re still kind of looking at options here, is to make your homepage kind of this bilingual version that you’re talking about there, but to create separate pages additionally, for the individual language. So that if someone is looking for long form information about an international school like this, they can still find those kind of pure English or mostly English pages, and then from there, transition to the rest of your website. So lots of different options to think about.
Yeah. I think it might be tempting to try to do something sneaky and maybe hide one version of the page and say, well, users can see it, but search engines can’t. For the most part, I think you’d run into more technical issues when you do something like that, than you actually get any value out of it. So that’s one thing I would avoid doing.
