In North America, our choice of search engine is mostly Google with the exception of people who also use Bing and Yahoo what also bring their own amount of searches. We also have smaller search engines like DuckDuckGo, but Google has long held a big share of the majority of global markets. If your business is operating in many of the countries where Google is the clear market leader, you main goal of course will be to optimize for Google. But what you might not know is that there is a local Google for almost every country on the planet.
These local flavors of Google are going to show different search results, and that makes perfect of sense. Google Australia, for example, will give you a different set of results than the US flavor of Google. Lets say that we type the word “Chinese food“. We’ll see localized results, and these are both English-speaking countries. If we were to try the same keywords for Google Mexico and type with very basic Spanish translation of Chinese food: Comer China. Then that is a very different set of results. And if we were to change this for a more accurate translation: Comida China , we would see yet another very different set of results.
“Chinese food” search in USA Google:
“Chinese food” search in Australia’s Google:
“Comer china” search in Mexico’s Google
“Comida china” -proper spanish- search in Mexico Google:
Languages and locations can be extremely important to your international SEO strategy, but, we also have to consider that some of the most well-known search engines in the world are actually not that well-known at all in North America. If you’re targeting specific countries, you’ll need to understand which search engines hold the most market share. In some cases, getting discovered and indexed by these engines will require a bit of additional work and a longer-term effort.
To learn more about read What Is International SEO?, and the International SEO Buidu China Search Engine Guide. Also check the Top 5 search angines in CIS Nations: UKRAINE, RUSSIA, BELARUS, AND KAZAKHSTAN
I have checked international seo articles, but yours is really clear and helpful. The market research tools great aid!