Why You Should Think Twice Before Using Translator Plugins

Everton | Mar 25, 2007 | Comments


I was amazed how quickly and interesting the conversation that developed following my post asking how good translator plugins were. I thought I should highlight in a post part of the thread for those of you who haven’t read the comments, so that you will think twice before you install that Translation plugin you’ve got your eye on. (If you haven’t subscribed to the comments feed yet btw I’d advise doing so, as it’s getting to the point where the comments left on my site are better than the posts!)

After reading this link provided by TJP I decided that using a Translation Plugin was a bad move, and would result in my site actually getting less traffic rather than more.

This is because when Google’s robots translated pages it struggles to put them into context because the context is poor. Also, because these pages get very little of traffic and almost no inlinks all that’s being achieved is the creation of potentially thousands of poor quality pages as far as Google is concerned. These pages will be counted against the site in question, and Google will lower the relevancy of the other pages on the site, including the English language pages as a result.

As soon as I learnt this I turned Angsuman’s translator plugin off straight away. Not only did this make my server happier as this plugin is a major resource drain, the next time Google indexes my site it should hopefully bump up the ranking of a lot of my pages.


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • I was thinking of using a translator plugin but wasn't really sure if it would help. Lucky for me I came here first instead of installing one. Thanks for the info.
  • I think its better to just add Google Translator code to your website than installing a plug-in
  • All my "tag" pages were being translated as well. I actually had 2x as many tag pages as actual posts, another reason why Google may be devaluing my site. So I deleted all my tags pages because they were getting out of control anyways. Now, it's just back to the basic categories, pages, and post. Hopefully this will supercharge my traffic!
  • hmmm I am not sure about this one. Monitor your serps and the search engine visitors closely to see what happens once you shut the translator plugin.

    When I installed the plugin I have not seen any change on my main keywords (the 4 most active that I follow).
  • what tool do you use to montior your keywords?
  • (If you haven’t subscribed to the comments feed yet btw I’d advise doing so, as it’s getting to the point where the comments left on my site are better than the posts!)

    True!
    Great post! definitely would be in my next quick links!
  • Everton, the top 4 keywords I follow manually. Other keywords I use Shoemoney's SERP Tool.

    I was thinking about it and still has some doubts.

    "This is because when Google’s robots translated pages it struggles to put them into context because the context is poor."

    How so? Google first translates the page then it says the translation is not good? Sounds strange hehe, I dont think their search algorithm is so advanced as to differentiate a normal page from a machine translated one.

    Secondly regarding the incoming links, even most part of our "manually" written posts get few incoming links, its like 1 good post in a while that becomes good link bait.

    I still need to see some real evidence that the translated pages would reduce your SERP for the "original" pages in any way.
  • google struggles to put the translated pages into context becuase most of the times the page is gibberish and may miss important keywords because of the poor translation.
  • my site has over 1000 posts, and around 3000 comments, plus tag pages, category pages etc so lets say 10000 page. translating this ten times would add 100,000 pages to my site that don't get a lot of traffic, and also probably don't accurately reflect the correct content due to poor translation.

    Adding 100,000 pages in total to the 10,000 original pages MUST be influencing Google's ranking of a site. At a minimum it's adding 100,000 pages with next to no inbound links.
  • I tried installing that plugin and it didn't work out and as i was busy that day, I didn't take any steps to fix it up...I guess that was for good...
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