Google's Official Tips On Internationalizing A Web Site

Jun 3, 2013 - 8:26 am 1 — by

google multilingualGoogle's Jens O. Meiert and Tony Ruscoe posted on the Google Webmaster Blog 6 quick tips for international web sites.

This is a topic we covered a lot and honestly is somewhat foreign (pun) to me.

The 6 tips in short are:

1. Make pages I18N-ready in the markup, not the style sheets

2. Use one style sheet for all locales

3. Use the [dir='rtl'] attribute selector

4. Use the :lang() pseudo class

5. Mirror left- and right-related values

6. Keep an eye on the details

Now, a WebmasterWorld thread asked why is Google saying to use the language attribute when it doesn't seem to work. One webmaster said, "Google ignores code level language informations," so why are they recommending it? Do they really ignore that information? I didn't think they do.

In any event, feel free to join the discussion on these tips in the forums.

Forum discussion at Google+ & WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 25, 2026

Sep 25, 2026 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google September 2026 Spam Update Is Here, Goodbye Discover Traffic, Multimodal Search Reporting & CrUX Ad Metrics In Page Experience

Sep 25, 2026 - 8:01 am
OpenAI

OpenAI Has Quality Raters, AI Trainers, & They Cheated With AI

Sep 25, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google LSAs Showing Google Business Profile Number, Not Google Ads Number

Sep 25, 2026 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Testing Editable Labels On Images

Sep 25, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Disables Editing Target ROAS While Promotion Mode Is Active

Sep 25, 2026 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google (Rich Snippets) Structured Data Markup Helper Tool