how to register same site, different languages?

Hello,

My site, www.ilanguage.com, is available in 11 languages. After some SE Optimization, i am ready to update my subscriptions to DMOZ, however i would like to have all my languages do well if possible.

What i am wondering about it the following: Will i be penalized (have my listings removed) if I submit the different language versions of my site to the different language versions of DMOZ?
Example:
English: www.ilanguage.com/en/ - submitted to DMOZ English
Spanish - www.ilanguage/es/ - Submitted to DMOZ Spanish
German - www.ilanguage/de/ - Submitted to German Germany
French - www.ilanguage/fr/ - Submitted to DMOZ French
And so on

Another thing i was wondering is, for example if i updated a listing of my website in english, and a couple of days later, i find a category that fits it better, can i update the listing again, or does updating it again in such a short time increase the chances of my site being banned?

Thanks in advance,
Alex Akrabov
iLanguage - On-Line Marketing
www.ilanguage.com

I'm not going to quote the Editors' guidelines (in part, because some of the links are located on a machine which is down at the moment), but the general rule is that:

Listing sites in language-specific directories are independent. (In other words, suggesting or listing a site in the English language will neither help nor hinder listing in German, French, Spanish, etc.)

Machine translations (if detected by the specific-language editor) do not count, and may detract from your listing.

Normally, if the English, Deutsch, etc, links are on http://www.ilanguage.com/ , that would be listed instead of http://www.ilanguage.com/en , http://www.ilanguage.com/es , etc.

This may not represent official policy, but it represents my understanding of it.

Re: how to register same site, different languages

Unless the actual content of your site or your business have changed, you don't need to submit an update request for the listings you already have (we're not a search engine and don't care about any SEOing you've done to the site). The description you currently have appears to be accurate.

Sites in multiple languages are encouraged to submit to the appropriate language categories but submit only the main URL (www.ilanguage.com) to the various language categories, not the language-specific links. You are already listed in the Italian category as well as the English one.

Re: how to register same site, different languages

hello,

i am updating the website because apart of SE optimization we have completely redisigned the entire website and apart from that changed the programming language from *.asp to *.aspx.

it looks like i kind of screwed up on this one because i have already updated the listing for the english site on the english DMOZ yesterday and i have submitted with the URL www.ilanguage.com/en/ since i thought that this way its easier for users & crawlers to be taken to the home (index) page. The other reason i have submitted language specific links is because the website contains a redirector which will automatically take you to the language of your country (region) depending on your IP if the link is just www.ilanguage.com, which is good for people directly typing in www.ilanguage.com in their browser, but might be inconvenient for someone in spain who is searching on an english search engine, and then has the page open up in spanish instead of english when thay click the link.

So basically i would like your opinion on if its really bad to submit language specific links on each different language category in DMOZ or if i can go ahead and do that without problem>?

Re: how to register same site, different languages

My personal opinion, which doesn't represent official ODP policy, is that it would be better to submit the language-specific links. The reason is that, as you say, you can't actually go to www.ilanguage.com but will be taken to one of the language-specific subpages when typing that. The result of that was, for me, that I was taken to www.ilanguage.com/sv which didn't exist - so all I was able to see of the site was a "Page not found" page until I changed the language in my browser settings from Swedish to English. (You might want to consider removing the subdirectories for languages you don't actually offer to avoid that )

I still don't really see why you want an update, though - the URL is still OK (apart from the subdirectory issue but that's not really a problem) and the descriptions in those languages I can understand seem adequate enough. You'll just want to submit to those languages you have on your site where you aren't yet listed, as far as I can see. (Yes, a site can be listed in each language that it is available in - not machine translations, as Arthur Rubin said, but that's not an issue here.)

Re: how to register same site, different languages

So basically i would like your opinion on if its really bad to submit language specific links on each different language category in DMOZ or if i can go ahead and do that without problem>?

Click to expand...

You can submit whatever URL you like but the editor listing it will (or should) change it to the main one. I would personally remove the autoredirect to a language version thing. I say that as a surfer, not an editor -- I hate it when a site presumes to decide what I would like to see (like MSN deciding I want to see the Canadian version of their main page when I really want the US one).

Re: how to register same site, different languages

I'm not sure which question you're asking.

If you ask: "Should I submit my site in each language category that it fits?" the answer is "Yes. please do." The French category editor may not be ABLE to send your site to the proper German category; the English category editor may not be able to find the right French category. You can help.

If the question is "should I submit the DOMAIN itself, or the specific-language home page?" We ALWAYS MUCHLY prefer that you submit just the domain name. You know why -- you've said that you rearranged your site and broke the internal links once already. Multiply that by 100,000 multilingual sites, and we don't have the manpower to deal with that.
Rearrange your site twice a week if you want, just always make sure people speaking any language can find their language from the site's main home page. And that also will help us.

Re: how to register same site, different languages

okay, so i will register directly with www.ilanguage.com in all the different languages. unfortunately i updated my english subscription on wednesday using www.ilanguage.com/en/, but i guess the editor who does the update will change it to www.ilanguage.com, or should i update that specific subscription again using www.ilanguage.com?

As far as the redirector which takes you to the region language depending on your IP, is this something frowned upon by directories, or it doesn't matter?

Nea, thanks for pointing that out, actually the /sv/ directory was available to the redirector even though that doesn't exist, we took care of this problem.

Re: how to register same site, different languages

...should i update that specific subscription again using www.ilanguage.com?

Click to expand...

Looks like someone already went through and changed all of your existing listings (English, Korean, Spanish, and Italian) to http://www.ilanguage.com/ so don't worry about submitting updates for them.

As far as the redirector which takes you to the region language depending on your IP, is this something frowned upon by directories, or it doesn't matter?

Click to expand...

I think it is OK in your situation, since you provide obvious links to the other languages at the top of the index page in each language, so no matter what language users are redirected to, they can pick the one they want. If a site "stranded" a user in a language they don't know, that would be a problem. That's just my opinion, though -- Foe

Re: how to register same site, different languages

We don't frown upon it but it's not a brilliant solution. If you have to include redirects, do so on the bases of the 'Accept-lang' HTTP header as that is likely to be more accurate.

Even better - forget the redirects and allow the user to select their language manually.