AI search isn’t just changing what content ranks; it’s quietly redrawing where your brand appears to belong. As large language models (LLMs) synthesize results across languages and markets, they blur the boundaries that once kept content localized. Traditional geographic signals of hreflang, ccTLDs, and regional schema are being bypassed, misread, or overwritten by global defaults. The result: your English site becomes the “truth” for all markets, while your local teams wonder why their traffic and conversions are vanishing.
This article focuses primarily on search-grounded AI systems such as Google’s AI Overviews and Bing’s generative search, where the problem of geo-identification drift is most visible. Purely conversational AI may behave differently, but the core issue remains: when authority signals and training data skew global and geographic context, synthesis often loses that context.
The New Geography Of Search
In classic search, location was explicit:
IP, language, and market-specific domains dictated what users saw.
Hreflang told Google which market variant to serve.
Local content lived on distinct ccTLDs or subdirectories, supported by region-specific backlinks and metadata.
AI search breaks this deterministic system.
In a recent article on “AI Translation Gaps,” International SEO Blas Giffuni demonstrated this problem when he typed the phrase “proveedores de químicos industriales.” Rather than presenting the local market website with a list of industrial chemical suppliers in Mexico, it presented a translated list from the US, of which some either did not do business in Mexico or did not meet local safety or business requirements. A generative engine doesn’t just retrieve documents; it synthesizes an answer using whatever language or source it finds most complete.
If your local pages are thin, inconsistently marked up, or overshadowed by global English content, the model will simply pull from the worldwide corpus and rewrite the answer in Spanish or French.
On the surface, it looks localized. Underneath, it’s English data wearing a different flag.
Why Geo-Identification Is Breaking
1. Language ≠ Location
AI systems treat language as a proxy for geography. A Spanish query could represent Mexico, Colombia, or Spain. If your signals don’t specify which markets you serve through schema, hreflang, and local citations, the model lumps them together.
When that happens, your strongest instance wins. And nine times out of 10, that’s your main English language website.
2. Market Aggregation Bias
During training, LLMs learn from corpus distributions that heavily favor English content. When related entities appear across markets (‘GlobalChem Mexico,’ ‘GlobalChem Japan’), the model’s representations are dominated by whichever instance has the most training examples, typically the English global brand. This creates an authority imbalance that persists during inference, causing the model to default to global content even for market-specific queries.
3. Canonical Amplification
Search engines naturally try to consolidate near-identical pages, and hreflang exists to counter that bias by telling them that similar versions are valid alternatives for different markets. When AI systems retrieve from these consolidated indexes, they inherit this hierarchy, treating the canonical version as the primary source of truth. Without explicit geographic signals in the content itself, regional pages become invisible to the synthesis layer, even when they are adequately tagged with hreflang.
This amplifies market-aggregation bias; your regional pages aren’t just overshadowed, they’re conceptually absorbed into the parent entity.
Will This Problem Self-Correct?
As LLMs incorporate more diverse training data, some geographic imbalances may diminish. However, structural issues like canonical consolidation and the network effects of English-language authority will persist. Even with perfect training data distribution, your brand’s internal hierarchy and content depth differences across markets will continue to influence which version dominates in synthesis.
The Ripple Effect On Local Search
Global Answers, Local Users
Procurement teams in Mexico or Japan receive AI-generated answers derived from English pages. The contact info, certifications, and shipping policies are wrong, even if localized pages exist.
Local Authority, Global Overshadowing
Even strong local competitors are being displaced because models weigh the English/global corpus more heavily. The result: the local authority doesn’t register.
Brand Trust Erosion
Users perceive this as neglect:
“They don’t serve our market.” “Their information isn’t relevant here.”
In regulated or B2B industries where compliance, units, and standards matter, this results in lost revenue and reputational risk.
Hreflang In The Age of AI
Hreflang was a precision instrument in a rules-based world. It told Google which page to serve in which market. But AI engines don’t “serve pages” – they generate responses.
That means:
Hreflang becomes advisory, not authoritative.
Current evidence suggests LLMs don’t actively interpret hreflang during synthesis because it doesn’t apply to the document-level relationships they use for reasoning.
If your canonical structure points to global pages, the model inherits that hierarchy, not your hreflang instructions.
In short, hreflang still helps Google indexing, but it no longer governs interpretation.
AI systems learn from patterns of connectivity, authority, and relevance. If your global content has richer interlinking, higher engagement, and more external citations, it will always dominate the synthesis layer – regardless of hreflang.
Let’s look at a real-world pattern observed across markets:
Weak local content (thin copy, missing schema, outdated catalog).
Global canonical consolidates authority under .com.
AI overview or chatbot pulls the English page as source data.
The model generates a response in the user’s language, drawing on facts and context from the English source while adding a few local brand names to create the appearance of localization, and then serves a synthetic local-language answer.
User clicks through to a U.S. contact form, gets blocked by shipping restrictions, and leaves frustrated.
Each of these steps seems minor, but together they create a digital sovereignty problem – global data has overwritten your local market’s representation.
Geo-Legibility: The New SEO Imperative
In the era of generative search, the challenge isn’t just to rank in each market – it’s to make your presence geo-legible to machines.
Geo-legibility builds on international SEO fundamentals but addresses a new challenge: making geographic boundaries interpretable during AI synthesis, not just during traditional retrieval and ranking. While hreflang tells Google which page to index for which market, geo-legibility ensures the content itself contains explicit, machine-readable signals that survive the transition from structured index to generative response.
That means encoding geography, compliance, and market boundaries in ways LLMs can understand during both indexing and synthesis.
Key Layers Of Geo-Legibility
Layer
Example Action
Why It Matters
Content
Include explicit market context (e.g., “Distribuimos en México bajo norma NOM-018-STPS”)
Reinforces relevance to a defined geography.
Structure
Use schema for areaServed, priceCurrency, and addressLocality
Provides explicit geographic context that may influence retrieval systems and helps future-proof as AI systems evolve to better understand structured data.
Links & Mentions
Secure backlinks from local directories and trade associations
Builds local authority and entity clustering.
Data Consistency
Align address, phone, and organization names across all sources
Prevents entity merging and confusion.
Governance
Monitor AI outputs for misattribution or cross-market drift
Detects early leakage before it becomes entrenched.
Note: While current evidence for schema’s direct impact on AI synthesis is limited, these properties strengthen traditional search signals and position content for future AI systems that may parse structured data more systematically.
Geo-legibility isn’t about speaking the right language; it’s about being understood in the right place.
Diagnostic Workflow: “Where Did My Market Go?”
Run Local Queries in AI Overview or Chat Search. Test your core product and category terms in the local language and record which language, domain, and market each result reflects.
Capture Cited URLs and Market Indicators. If you see English pages cited for non-English queries, that’s a signal your local content lacks authority or visibility.
Cross-Check Search Console Coverage. Confirm that your local URLs are indexed, discoverable, and mapped correctly through hreflang.
Inspect Canonical Hierarchies. Ensure your regional URLs aren’t canonicalized to global pages. AI systems often treat canonical as “primary truth.”
Test Structured Geography. For Google and Bing, be sure to add or validate schema properties like areaServed, address, and priceCurrency to help engines map jurisdictional relevance.
Repeat Quarterly. AI search evolves rapidly. Regular testing ensures your geo boundaries remain stable as models retrain.
Remediation Workflow: From Drift To Differentiation
Step
Focus
Impact
1
Strengthen local data signals (structured geography, certification markup).
Clarifies market authority
2
Build localized case studies, regulatory references, and testimonials.
Anchors E-E-A-T locally
3
Optimize internal linking from regional subdomains to local entities.
Reinforces market identity
4
Secure regional backlinks from industry bodies.
Adds non-linguistic trust
5
Adjust canonical logic to favor local markets.
Prevents AI inheritance of global defaults
6
Conduct “AI visibility audits” alongside traditional SEO reports.
Beyond Hreflang: A New Model Of Market Governance
Executives need to see this for what it is: not an SEO bug, but a strategic governance gap.
AI search collapses boundaries between brand, market, and language. Without deliberate reinforcement, your local entities become shadows inside global knowledge graphs.
That loss of differentiation affects:
Revenue: You become invisible in the markets where growth depends on discoverability.
Compliance: Users act on information intended for another jurisdiction.
Equity: Your local authority and link capital are absorbed by the global brand, distorting measurement and accountability.
Why Executives Must Pay Attention
The implications of AI-driven geo drift extend far beyond marketing. When your brand’s digital footprint no longer aligns with its operational reality, it creates measurable business risk. A misrouted customer in the wrong market isn’t just a lost lead; it’s a symptom of organizational misalignment between marketing, IT, compliance, and regional leadership.
Executives must ensure their digital infrastructure reflects how the company actually operates, which markets it serves, which standards it adheres to, and which entities own accountability for performance. Aligning these systems is not optional; it’s the only way to minimize negative impact as AI platforms redefine how brands are recognized, attributed, and trusted globally.
Executive Imperatives
Reevaluate Canonical Strategy. What once improved efficiency may now reduce market visibility. Treat canonicals as control levers, not conveniences.
Expand SEO Governance to AI Search Governance. Traditional hreflang audits must evolve into cross-market AI visibility reviews that track how generative engines interpret your entity graph.
Reinvest in Local Authority. Encourage regional teams to create content with market-first intent – not translated copies of global pages.
Measure Visibility Differently. Rankings alone no longer indicate presence: track citations, sources, and language of origin in AI search outputs.
Final Thought
AI didn’t make geography irrelevant; it just exposed how fragile our digital maps were.
Hreflang, ccTLDs, and translation workflows gave companies the illusion of control.
AI search removed the guardrails, and now the strongest signals win – regardless of borders.
The next evolution of international SEO isn’t about tagging and translating more pages. It’s about governing your digital borders and making sure every market you serve remains visible, distinct, and correctly represented in the age of synthesis.
Because when AI redraws the map, the brands that stay findable aren’t the ones that translate best; they’re the ones who define where they belong.
The European Commission has proposed a “Digital Omnibus” package that would relax parts of the GDPR, the AI Act, and Europe’s cookie rules in the name of competitiveness and simplification.
If you work with EU traffic or rely on European data for analytics, advertising, or AI features, it’s worth tracking this proposal even though nothing has changed in law yet.
What The Digital Omnibus Would Change
The Digital Omnibus would revise several laws at once.
On AI, the proposal would push back stricter rules for high-risk systems from August 2026 to December 2027. It would also lighten documentation and reporting obligations for some systems and move more oversight to the EU AI Office.
Regarding data protection, the Commission aims to clarify when information is no longer considered ‘personal,’ making it easier to share and reuse anonymized and pseudonymized datasets, especially for AI training.
Privacy group noyb says this new wording isn’t just about clarifying the rules. They believe the proposal introduces a more subjective approach, hinging on what a controller claims it can or plans to do. Noyb warns this change could exclude parts of the adtech and data-broker industry from GDPR protections.
Cookies, Consent, And Browser Signals
The cookie section is likely to be the most visible change for your day-to-day work if the proposal moves forward.
The Commission wants to cut “banner fatigue” by exempting some non-risk cookies from consent pop-ups and shifting more control into browser-level settings that apply across sites.
In practice, that would mean fewer consent banners for low-risk uses, such as certain analytics or strictly functional storage, once categories are defined.
The proposal would also require websites to respect standardized, machine-readable privacy signals from browsers when those standards exist.
AI Training & Data Rights
One of the most contested pieces of the Digital Omnibus is how it treats data used to train AI systems.
The package would allow companies including Google, Meta, and OpenAI to use Europeans’ personal data to train AI models under a broadened legal basis.
Privacy groups have argued that this kind of training should rely on explicit opt-in consent, rather than the more flexible approach they see in the proposal.
Noyb warns that long-running behavioral data, such as social media histories, could be used to train AI systems with only an opt-out model that is difficult for people to exercise in practice.
Why This Matters
This proposal is worth keeping on your radar if you’re responsible for analytics, consent, or AI-driven products that reach EU users.
Over time, you might observe smaller, browser-driven consent experiences for EU traffic, along with a different compliance approach for AI features that depend on behavioral data.
For now, nothing in your cookie banners, GA4 setup, or AI workflows needs to change solely because of the Digital Omnibus.
Looking Ahead
The Digital Omnibus is an early signal that the EU is re-balancing its digital rulebook around AI and competitiveness, not privacy and enforcement alone.
Key items to monitor include Parliament’s amendments to AI training and data language, cookie and browser-signal provisions for CMPs and browsers, and changes to AI training and consent for EU users.
This post was sponsored by Weglot. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
When Google’s AI Overviews launched in 2024, dozens of questions quickly surfaced among SEO professionals, one being: if AI now curates and summarizes search results, how do websites earn visibility, especially across languages?
Weglot recently conducted a data-driven study, analyzing 1.3 million citations across Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT to determine if LLMs cite content in one language, would they also cite it in others?
The result: translated websites saw up to 327% more visibility in AI Overviews than untranslated ones, a clear signal that international SEO is becoming inseparable from AI search.
What’s more, websites with another language available were also more likely to be cited in AI Overviews, regardless of the language the search was made.
The Changing Nature of Search
This shift is redefining the rules of visibility. AI Overviews and large language models (LLMs) now mediate how information is discovered. Instead of ranking pages, they “cite” sources in generated responses.
But with that shift comes a new risk: if your website isn’t available in the user’s search language, does AI simply overlook it, or worse, send users to Google Translate’s proxy page instead?
The risk with Google’s Translate proxy is that while it does the translation work for you, you have no control over the translations of your content. Worse still, you don’t get any of the traffic benefits, as users are not directed to your site.
The Study
Here’s how the research worked. To understand how translation affects AI visibility, Weglot focused the research on Spanish-language websites across two markets: Spain and Mexico.
The study was then split into two phases. Phase one focused on websites that weren’t translated, and therefore only displayed the language intended for their market, in this case, Spanish.
In that phase, Weglot looked at 153 websites without English translations: 98 from Spain and 55 from Mexico. Weglot deliberately selected high-traffic sites because they offered no English versions.
Phase two involved a comparison group of 83 Spanish and Mexican sites with versions in both Spanish and English. This allowed Weglot to directly compare the performance of translated versus untranslated content.
In total, this generated 22,854 queries in phase one and 12,138 in phase two. The methodology converted the top 50 non-branded keywords of each site into queries that users would likely search, and then these were translated between the Spanish and English versions.
In total, 1.3 million citations were analyzed.
The Key Results
Untranslated Sites Have Very Low AI Search Visibility
The findings show that untranslated websites experience a substantial drop in visibility for searches conducted in non-available languages, despite maintaining strong visibility in the current available language.
Diving deeper into this, untranslated sites essentially lose massive visibility. From the study, even when these Spanish websites performed well in Spanish searches, the sites virtually disappeared in English searches.
Looking at this data further within Google AI Overviews:
The sample size of 98 untranslated sites from Spain had 17,094 citations for Spanish queries vs 2,810 citations for the equivalent search in English, a 431% gap in visibility.
Taking a look at untranslated sites in Mexico, the study identified a similar pattern. 12,038 citations for Spanish queries vs 3,450 citations for English, showing 213% fewer citations when searching English.
Even ChatGPT, though slightly more balanced, still favored translated sites, with Spanish sites receiving 3.5% fewer citations in English and 4.9% fewer with Mexican sites.
Image created by Weglot, November 2025
Translated Sites Have 327% More AI Search Visibility
But what happens when you do translate your site?
Bringing in the comparison group of Spanish websites that also have an English version, we can see that translated sites dramatically close the visibility gap and that having a second language transformed visibility within Google AI Overviews.
Google AI Overviews:
Translated sites in Spain saw 10,046 citations vs 8,048 in English, showcasing only a 22% gap.
Translated sites in Mexico showed 5,527 citations for Spanish queries and 3,325 citations for English, and a difference of 59%.
Overall, translated sites achieved 327% more visibility than untranslated ones and earned 24% more total citations per query.
When looking at ChatGPT, the bias almost vanished. Translated sites saw near-equal citations in both languages.
Image created by Weglot, November 2025
Next Steps: Translate Your Site To Boost Global Visibility In AI SERPs
Not only does having multiple languages across your site ensure your site gets picked up for searches in multiple languages, but it also adds to the overall visibility of your site as a whole.
The study found that translated sites perform better across all metrics. The data shows that translated sites received 24% more citations per prompt than untranslated sites.
Looking at this by language, translation resulted in a 33% increase in English citations and a 16% increase in Spanish citations per query.
Weglot’s findings indicate that translation acts as a signal of authority and reliability for AIOs and ChatGPT, boosting citation performance across all languages, not only the ones content is translated.
Image created by Weglot, November 2025
AI Search Rewards Translated Content as a Visibility Signal
Traditional international SEO has long focused on hreflang tags and localized keywords. But in the age of AI search, translation itself becomes a visibility signal:
Language alignment: AI engines prioritize content matching the query’s language.
Traffic control: Proper translations prevent Google Translate proxies from intercepting clicks.
Semantic reach: Multilingual content broadens your surface area for AI training and citation.
Put simply: If your content isn’t in the language of the question, it’s unlikely it will be in the answer either.
The Business Impact
The consequences aren’t theoretical. One case in Weglot’s dataset, a major Spanish book retailer selling English-language titles worldwide without an English version of its site, shows the impact.
When English speakers searched for relevant books:
The site appeared 64% less often in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
In 36% of the cases where it did appear, the link pointed to Google Translate’s proxy, not the retailer’s own domain.
Despite offering exactly what English users wanted, the business lost visibility, traffic, and ultimately, sales.
The Bigger Picture: AI Search Is Redefining SEO and Translation Is Now a Growth Strategy
The implications reach far beyond Spain or Mexico, or even the Spanish language.
As AI search evolves, the SEO playbook is expanding. Ranking isn’t just about “position one” anymore; it’s about being cited, summarized, and surfaced by machines trained on multilingual web content.
Weglot’s findings point to a future where translation is both an SEO and an AI strategy and not a localization afterthought.
With Google AIOs now live in multiple languages and ChatGPT integrating real-time web data, multilingual visibility has become an equity issue: sites optimized for one language risk being invisible in another.
Image created by Weglot, November 2025
Final Takeaway: Untranslated Sites Are Invisible in AI Search
The evidence is clear: Untranslated = unseen. Website translation is high up there for AIO visibility.
As AI continues to shape how search engines understand relevance, translation isn’t just about accessibility; it’s how your brand gets recognized by algorithms and audiences alike.
For the easiest way to translate a website, start your free trial now!
Plus, enjoy a 15% discount for 12 months on public plans by using the promo code SEARCH15 on a paid plan purchase.
Ecosia has begun delivering its own search results for the first time in its 16-year history, starting with users in France who will receive a portion of results from a new European search index developed jointly with Qwant.
The rollout marks the first implementation of the European Search Perspective (EUSP) joint venture, which has created Staan (Search Trusted API Access Network), a privacy-focused search infrastructure designed for Europe.
Current Implementation & Timeline
French users are now receiving search results directly from EUSP’s independent European index. Ecosia aims to serve 30% of French search queries through the new infrastructure by the end of 2025.
“Having our own search infrastructure is a critical step for digital plurality and for building a sovereign European alternative. With more control over our offering, we can better serve users, develop ethical AI, and double down on our mission to build tech that benefits people and the planet.”
Technical Independence
Ecosia and Qwant have historically relied on syndication platforms from major US tech companies. The new infrastructure allows both companies to deliver results independently and make backend improvements without relying on external providers.
The broader goal is to reduce reliance on digital infrastructure controlled by foreign companies.
Open Index, Structured For Growth
EUSP isn’t limited to Ecosia and Qwant. The index is open to other companies building search or generative AI tools.
It is also structured to allow outside investment, unlike Ecosia’s steward-owned model, where 99.99% of shares belong to a foundation.
Kroll said the goal is to create an infrastructure that supports competition and innovation in Europe while maintaining strong privacy protections:
“This isn’t just about better search. It’s about the freedom to build and shape the future of tech in Europe.”
Looking Ahead
Ecosia’s partnership with Qwant could lead to more diversity in how European users access and interact with search.
While the initial rollout is limited to France, the infrastructure is designed to scale and support other companies and markets over time.
Global companies today face a paradox. Search is more important than ever, yet how it’s managed across markets is often inconsistent, inefficient, and misaligned with broader digital goals.
Too often, SEO is seen as a localized effort, tactically delegated to regional teams or outsourced agencies.
While local knowledge is critical, international SEO success demands structure, governance, and repeatable processes. Otherwise, companies waste resources, duplicate efforts, and fail to capitalize on scalable gains.
This article offers a blueprint for designing an effective SEO organizational structure for global companies, rooted in real-world service-level governance.
We’ll explore what to centralize, what to localize, and how to balance best practices with market nuance.
Drawing from the Service Level Agreement (SLA)-based SEO model used at leading enterprises, we’ll break down the building blocks of a successful international SEO operation, from key performance indicators (KPIs) and tooling to budget models and agency management.
What To Centralize Vs. Localize
An effective SEO structure isn’t just about resourcing; it’s about allocation logic. Knowing which tasks belong at corporate, brand, or market levels prevents duplication, preserves strategic clarity, and empowers those closest to the customer.
This may be one of the most challenging aspects of international SEO operations, particularly for decentralized organizations. You’ll need to evaluate what must be done at each level thoughtfully.
Consider where content is created, how websites are maintained, how diverse market content truly is, and how mature your localization process is.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, not even a “one-size-fits-most” option. Each organization must assess its structure, workflows, and existing capabilities.
In many cases, it’s advisable to begin with a few uncontroversial initiatives, such as aligning on what is already established in brand or web standards, content themes, topical coverage, and entity research, and establishing consistent reporting.
Once those foundational elements are in place, you can move toward more sensitive and territorial elements such as Webmaster Tools account management, diagnostic methodology standardization, and global governance of webpage templates.
Centralized Functions (Corporate Center Of Excellence)
These activities are best housed within a corporate SEO function or Center of Excellence (CoE), where scale, tooling, and data access are leveraged across the enterprise:
Training and enablement of brand and market teams.
Tool governance and platform procurement.
Shared Responsibilities (BU And Editorial)
Some functions require cross-functional collaboration between the brand/business unit and central teams:
Editorial workflow integration.
Quarterly content planning tied to search trends.
Performance reviews of strategic campaigns.
Metadata refinement and topics alignment.
KPI alignment between SEO, PPC, and social media.
Localized Responsibilities (Market Or Regional Teams)
Localization is more than just translation. Market teams need autonomy in areas that require cultural fluency, deep customer knowledge, and search behavior insight:
Local-language topic and content research and mapping.
Not all localization adds value. Avoid local divergence when:
The infrastructure doesn’t support market-specific subdomains or folders.
The same product or offer is consistent across regions.
Central models can outperform local improvisation (e.g., PLPs).
There’s limited market-specific search volume or opportunity.
Standardization Of Best Practices
To succeed at scale, international SEO must rely on shared standards that create consistency and reduce avoidable errors.
Standardization accelerates execution and allows for cross-market insights.
Key Elements Of Standardization:
Enterprise SEO Playbook: Documented standards, processes, templates, and escalation paths.
SEO Training Curriculum: Modular training by role type, from content creators to developers.
Content Optimization Templates: Consistent formats for metadata, searcher intent, and markup.
Glossary and Taxonomy: Shared terminology dictionary and content tagging schema.
Governance Reviews: Scheduled audits of adherence to SEO standards by markets and BUs.
Standardization doesn’t mean rigidity. It means creating a foundation that enables innovation and agility at the local level while preserving enterprise-wide integrity.
KPIs That Matter At Each Level
Metrics must reflect both operational performance and business impact, and be meaningful at each layer of the organization.
In one real-world example, a company managing SEO through multiple agencies across markets experienced significant inefficiencies due to inconsistent reporting standards.
Regional and global teams were forced to spend time reconciling disparate metrics, definitions, and formats.
Enforcing consistent KPIs and using standardized reporting templates eliminated this wasted effort, freeing up time for analysis and action rather than reconciliation.
Corporate-Level KPIs
Organic market share growth.
Revenue or lead contributions.
Topical and answer shelf space across global regions.
If data collection and presentation are consistent, it is easy to roll up data across markets and business units to see the total impact on the business, opportunities, and problems.
Consistent and business-oriented metrics are critical to making the business case for continued funding and support of your initiatives.
Ensure KPIs are actionable, standardized across teams and markets, and demonstrate business value to stakeholders.
Process Design & SLA Governance
Clearly defined processes eliminate ambiguity and ensure that SEO deliverables happen on time and with quality.
SLAs are formal commitments defining expected service levels, responsibilities, and response times across collaborating teams.
As organizations mature in their SEO operations, introducing SLAs becomes essential, especially when coordinating between global, brand, and market-level stakeholders.
For example, suppose a global or brand team is responsible for actions that impact a lower level, such as a local market. In that case, those responsibilities must be documented and bound to SLA metrics.
This not only clarifies accountability but reinforces cross-functional support. Consider a global product launch: If the worldwide team owns the standardized topic taxonomy, it must be delivered to local markets in time for localization and adaptation.
Failure to meet these timeframes puts pressure on markets at launch and risks missed visibility. An SLA helps prevent this by enforcing alignment through timelines and accountability.
Core SLA Components:
Defined Turnaround Times: For topical or taxonomy research, page audits, and performance reporting.
Prioritization Levels: Normal, high-priority, emergency, with response timelines.
Escalation Paths: For unmet KPIs or technical blockers.
Quarterly Review Cadence: For content clusters, PLPs, and editorial integration.
Feedback Loops: Structured inputs from local teams into topic and content models and optimization cycles.
All SLAs should be clearly documented and agreed upon by both internal stakeholders and external agency partners. This alignment ensures that expectations are mutually understood and that accountability is shared.
In addition, a defined escalation process, covering both operational delays and performance disputes, must be in place and visible across all participants in the SEO workflow.
Process governance should be transparent, with clear ownership between corporate, brand, and local roles.
A robust tool utilization strategy ensures consistency, visibility, and collaboration across geographies.
The proper tool structure minimizes duplication, improves time-to-insight, and supports efficient SEO workflows, yet it does not impede any unique requirements at market levels.
Core Elements:
Centralized Tool Procurement: Licensing enterprise-grade platforms at scale and using automation or appropriate seat licenses for brands and markets.
Shared Access & Dashboards: Central teams provision access and enforce naming conventions and tagging protocols.
Integration With Tech Stack: SEO tools integrated into content management system (CMS), digital asset management (DAM), analytics, and campaign platforms.
Local Adaptation Guidelines: Empower markets to use supplementary tools while maintaining reporting standards.
Tools should be centrally funded to ensure consistency, leverage volume-based pricing, and simplify vendor relationships.
When centralized funding is not feasible, a “tin cup” model may be used, with markets contributing based on utilization and need. This hybrid approach helps ensure broad access to necessary tools while aligning budgets to value creation.
A real-world example underscores the importance of strategic tooling governance. In one organization, the enterprise licensed a powerful SEO diagnostic platform, but with a cap on the number of URLs that could be crawled.
Since U.S.-based teams initiated most crawls, smaller markets were often excluded due to exhausted crawl credits.
This led to a lack of visibility into localized issues, missed global diagnostic signals, and an inability to surface SEO problems across the full portfolio.
Organizations must ensure tooling limits don’t inadvertently prioritize one region over another and that diagnostic equity is built into global processes.
Budget & Resource Allocation Models
Budgets must reflect strategic intent, balancing centralized enablement with market agility.
A key benefit of adopting a three-level management structure aligned to global and local goals is the ability to accurately identify actual resource needs.
This structure helps link local execution to global outcomes, providing the data and justification needed to support budget requests.
When budget allocation aligns with tactical needs and enterprise goals, securing executive sponsorship and scaling successful models becomes easier.
Pay-for-Play Services: Market-funded services like local content research, link building, or page audits.
Joint-Funded Pilots: CoE co-invests with business units to explore new opportunities.
Agency Rate Cards: Pre-negotiated pricing and scope packages to streamline engagement.
ROI Justification Models: Frameworks to link SEO investment to lead gen, conversion uplift, and efficiency gains.
Allocating resources based on market opportunity modeling helps prioritize high-impact work and avoid waste.
Managing Local Agencies And Execution Partners
International SEO execution often depends on external support, but market inconsistency can erode gains.
A lack of coordination in one multinational SEO initiative involving multiple agencies led to numerous tickets being submitted for nearly identical issues.
Some tickets addressed the same problem using different approaches, while others attempted to undo recently completed work based on alternate recommendations from a local agency.
This fragmentation caused unnecessary backlog, confusion, and frustration, highlighting the need for strong alignment on how SEO issues and changes are approached.
Key guidelines may be integrated directly into contracts with external partners. One proven approach references the corporate SEO Center of Excellence playbooks, brand-specific standards, and Google’s SEO fundamentals as foundational compliance requirements.
These guidelines should be codified in contractual language, with a clause stating that any unapproved deviations will be corrected at the partner’s expense.
This ensures that new websites, SEO experiments, or localization practices do not introduce non-compliant structures or technical risks without visibility and alignment.
Best Practices:
Approved Vendor Lists: Curated list of pre-vetted agencies aligned with corporate standards.
Onboarding Templates: Playbooks for briefing agencies on brand voice, workflows, and KPIs.
Monthly Performance Reviews: Standard cadence of reporting and performance analysis.
SEO Task Scoping Tools: Templates for briefs, content, and searcher interest research requests, and content updates.
Audit Trail Protocols: Visibility into agency deliverables, implementation logs, and turnaround times.
With effective agency governance, local teams can move fast, without compromising quality or consistency.
Transitioning To A Mature SEO Operating Model
A successful shift to an international SEO structure requires staged planning and executive alignment.
The saying goes that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your global search program be. However, the framework outlined here provides a structured starting point.
With the accelerating change in AI-driven search, having a uniform and consistent process that is well integrated across marketing, development, content creation, and all teams responsible for visibility and engagement is critical for future success.
Roadmap Elements:
Stakeholder Interviews: Capture local challenges, needs, and barriers to change.
Current-State Coverage Map: Understand what is done, where, by whom.
SEO Maturity Assessment: Evaluate readiness across people, process, tools, and performance.
Pilot Programs: Test governance, SLA models, and tooling structures with one region or BU.
Training & Change Management: Ongoing enablement to embed new practices and workflows.
Phased rollouts ensure learning loops and scalability.
Building An SEO Organization Built For Scale
As search becomes more multimodal and AI-driven, companies can no longer afford disjointed SEO practices.
A strong SEO organizational structure balances strategy and execution, global alignment and local nuance, standardization and innovation.
By embracing a service-level model, aligning KPIs to business outcomes, and establishing clear governance, global enterprises can:
Improve search visibility.
Reduce operational waste.
Enable consistent, scalable content performance.
Ultimately, SEO becomes not just a marketing function but a critical enabler of digital growth and global value creation.
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How does AI change the translation game?
We have to acknowledge that AI revolutionizes international expansion.
It can localize content and creative at scale, with low cost and high fidelity.
Image Credit: Lyna ™
For example, AI tools can identify local synonyms, slang, or spelling variations that match native search queries. Companies can create custom translation models tailored to their existing content, brand, voice, and tone.
A great example is Reddit, which has been using AI to translate content into other countries.
We can actually translate the existing Reddit corpus into other languages at human quality. Now, not all the content is relevant, but a lot of it is. We have been testing this in France, in French, in the first half of this year, and it’s gone very, very well.
It’s going well, indeed. As you can see in the screenshot below, Reddit is growing rapidly in many markets around the world.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
The purpose of localization is to create more “starter content” that inspires users in other countries to sign up and post on Reddit, which, in return, creates content that inspires more users to do the same.
Appearing in international search results is important to get that flywheel going.
The Reddit example shows that AI has become good enough for large-scale localization.
Another example is Airbnb, which has been using AI/ML to translate listing descriptions and reviews in over 60 languages:
As cross border travel returns, Airbnb’s new Translation Engine will provide a seamless experience for our Hosts and guests in over 60 languages. Translation Engine removes the need for click to translate buttons by automatically translating listing descriptions and reviews. Based on results from a study across our top ten languages we commissioned by a top machine translation evaluation company, Translation Engine improves the quality of more than 99% of Airbnb listings. Translation Engine uses millions of Airbnb data points to improve translations, so it will get even smarter over time as it learns from new content that’s submitted.1
Ultimately, if you are starting or growing your international SEO program, you should consider using these tools, especially if you want to avoid the most missed traps of internationalization that many marketing teams overlook.
And yet, I want to caution against not leaving humans out of the loop. Mistakes can, and will, happen. So, add a human QA step to the end of the localization pipeline.
Many teams stumble on the same two hidden traps when it comes to international SEO:
Overlocalization of pages, resulting in duplicate content.
Conflating translation with localization, leading to cultural mismatches.
Below, I’ll show you how to dodge these pitfalls for smoother, smarter global growth.
The Problem
Expanding global web presence often results in too many duplicated or minimally localized country-specific websites.
The result?
Split domain authority, duplicate content issues, confused search engines, and diluted user engagement. Not good.
Part of the problem is creating multiple localized site versions that are language-identical or very similar (e.g., separate sites for U.S. English, U.K. English, AU English, CA English, IN English, and so on).
While the intention makes practical sense, the end result often spells disaster for SEO. Multiple English-language URLs containing almost identical content quickly trigger potential duplicate-content issues.
Why It Matters
Weakened link authority: Splitting your SEO equity across too many domains hurts overall rankings.
Operational complexity: More sites mean more headaches keeping everything up-to-date, resulting in costly management overhead.
Duplicate content: When several URLs carry near-identical text, Google’s algorithms struggle to decide which localized URL variant to serve, and the wrong variants frequently rank.
Damaged user experience:Visitors arrive at pages that appear irrelevant or poorly targeted to their locale, viewing incorrect prices, availability, promotions, or contact details. The mismatch creates immediate friction and aggravates users.
Conversion degradation: Localization promise falls apart when users see localized SERP snippets yet encounter mismatched in-site product details. Trust drops radically, abandonments spike, and conversion rates plummet.
Wasted crawl budget and diluted authority: Handling multiple minimally differentiated URL sets spreads the domain’s backlink equity and crawl budget thinly. This reduces overall visibility and SEO performance across regions.
How To Solve It Clearly
Consolidate languages into subdirectories ([yoursite.com/fr/, yoursite.com/de/ …]).
One language, one subdirectory.
Personalize for local details like currencies.
Establish a global base for English under the root domain.
Use a single canonical set of globally unified English-language pages as a baseline, usually serving from yoursite.com/.
Use locale-specific modules.
Customize relevant on-page details dynamically according to user location. Rather than building separate carbon-copy pages to handle minor variations like currency, tax displays, date formats, small spelling adjustments, or promotional discounts, use IP-based or user settings-based server-side modules.
For example, implement a module that reads the IP location and loads the appropriate currency symbol and number format immediately. This minimizes duplicate issues drastically.
Raise the threshold for launching new locales.
Confirm clear need (traffic and economic feasibility).
Verify team and budget readiness upfront.
Don’t launch partially localized content – use “noindex” temporarily if needed.
Segment only when truly necessary (and do it carefully).
Split distinct URLs only when significant geographic differences lead you to create truly differentiated content. A few examples:
Pricing drastically changes due to market structure or legal considerations.
Products or SKUs’ availability heavily varies.
Messaging must accommodate drastically different promotional considerations, regulations, or cultural sensitivities.
Clearly document and sanity-check this rule: If the actual differences simply aren’t substantially meaningful from the user’s viewpoint, keep everything consolidated onto one unified English variant.
Monitor rigorously.
Set up Google Search Console accounts per market to proactively monitor warnings, impressions, and CTRs. Explicitly look for misalignments (e.g., Australian URLs ranking in Google UK search queries or Indian URLs unexpectedly showing on US results).
When this occurs, check your hreflang and server-side configuration immediately to correct breaches in localization and region targeting standards.
Good Example
IBM moved from 180 ccTLDs to 38 folders and saw a significant traffic uplift in organic traffic and a reduction in crawl errors.
Moving country subdirectories to language subdirectories shrank the site from 165 local sites to 10 language-specific sites. This change was both an improvement for international SEO and a pruning campaign.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
A counter-example is this domain, which has too many country subdirectories.
For example, it has a subdirectory for /en and /en-us/. As you can see from the diverging traffic lines in the screenshot below, Google struggles to understand which subdirectory to rank at the top.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
When evaluating local conditions through the lens of proper, functional localization across your site, focus your attention on these key dimensions:
1. Regulatory, legal, and compliance conditions.
Certain markets present unique regulatory obligations where you’ll have to take specific actions. Here are a few examples:
Indonesia & Vietnam: Require mandatory registration as an Electronic Systems Provider (PSE registration).
Brazil: Demands a local Data Protection Officer (DPO); data residency requirements apply for regulated industries like financial services and healthcare.
Censorship-heavy countries: Turkey, Iran, China – all necessitating special consideration for content restrictions and compliance.
2. Technical infrastructure and user context.
Tech constraints and habits shape recreation choices, speed expectations, and UX localization needs, like:
Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa): Heavy reliance on lower-spec Android devices demands careful attention to page size and loading speed.
Global date and format variations: U.S. format conventions (MM/DD/YYYY) differ significantly from many other locales, such as Germany (DD/MM/YYYY). Localization extends into numerical formatting and units as well.
The Problem
Many brands mistakenly treat localizing content as simply translating text into foreign languages (“word-for-word”).
But translation only handles basic information, ignoring deeper nuances around culture, emotion, humor, symbolism, taboos, and context.
There are several different methods/approaches to localization:
Pure word-for-word translation: Good only for straightforward or legal texts (such as invoices, terms of service, or technical specs). Typically, only numbers, currencies, units, and basic SEO keywords are adapted.
Localization of content: Adjusts copy, headlines, CTAs, imagery, emotional triggers, and metaphors for local cultures. Content conveys the same intent but resonates differently (“same meaning, new words”).
Culturalization of content: Goes deeper still, changing narrative and visuals, adapting low-context vs. high-context communication styles (i.e., direct vs. indirect language), colors, symbolism, taboos – even altering the product or campaign concept itself.
Co-creation (local original content): Fully tailored content created from the start by local experts – highest impact but highest effort and cost.
But most brands only focus on word-for-word translation or light localization of content. Many orgs miss out on investing in deeper localization, culturalization, or co-creation.
Why It Matters
If you focus only on word-for-word translation or light localization efforts, rather than doing the deeper work of cultivation of content and even co-creation, it can cause huge breaks in trust and/or missed conversion opportunities.
These real-world missteps show costly localization shortcuts in action:
Pepsi translated “Brings you back to life” into Mandarin as “Brings your ancestors back from the grave.”
HSBC’s “Assume Nothing” tagline became “Do Nothing” in certain markets, prompting expensive rebranding (£10 million).
Electrolux U.S. advertised its vacuums as “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux” (harmless UK idiom, embarrassing in American slang).
Gerber Baby Food jars depicted baby faces in West Africa, where labels typically showed product ingredients, alarming customers who believed they sold baby meat.
How To Solve It Clearly
Prioritize localizing high-value hero/landing pages thoroughly and correctly.
Engage native market experts to review copy, visuals, and creative.
Adapt imagery, localized holidays, date formats, currency, and units.
Perform new local keyword research using native SEO tools.
Validate the cultural appropriateness of all local references before launch.
When evaluating local conditions through the lens of deep localization, focus your attention on these key dimensions:
1. Alphabetical and linguistic differences.
Pay attention to the localization work needed for non-Latin alphabets and scripts. Examples include:
Japan.
Israel.
Middle East/Gulf Region (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt).
Plus, your team should acknowledge and consider multilingual complexities.
India is an excellent example of this, with 22 official languages, and search behaviors in Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali significantly differ from English.
2. Alternative search engine landscapes.
Not every market is dominated by Google. Adapt SEO strategies for local search engine market share.
Here are a few instances to keep in mind where Google isn’t the primary search engine:
South Korea: Naver (~55% market share).
Russia and CIS region (RU, UA, KZ): Yandex (around 45% share).
Czech Republic and Slovakia: Seznam (~15–25% of searches).
Applying thorough localization steps will avoid costly mistakes, preserve positive brand perception, and unlock organic reach in new markets effectively.
Our biggest SEO win at Shopify – ever – was domain unification.
In the summer of 2022, we combined all ccTLDs and language subdomains under the .com root directory and saw a +2x uplift in organic traffic.
Keep in mind, growth was incremental and not just due to adding more content to the domain.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
International expansion can really be the growth lever you’re looking for, as long as you keep the following guidelines:
Pick the right site architecture.
Don’t forget critical technical SEO details.
Structure your INTL SEO team right.
Differentiate by business model.
1. Pick The Right Site Architecture
Subdomain vs. ccTLD vs. Subdirectory
If you know me, you know I’m a big proponent of subdirectories.
I mean, you can’t blame me after the success I’ve seen with it at Shopify.
So, to be crystal clear, there are advantages to each:
ccTLDs are easy to recognize for users and lend themselves best for country-specific marketing campaigns.
Subdomains come with clean separation of codebases and servers (and lower migration risk because the domain stays the same).
Subdirectories combine the link and brand equity for all languages, incur no extra maintenance cost, and simplify reporting and monitoring.
From a purely SEO POV, I suggest you go with a subdirectory for languages.
Translating Slugs
A common question I get is whether to translate URL slugs.
There are strong pros and cons, which I will go into below.
But my recommendation is to keep the slug for markets that share the Latin alphabet and translate slugs for different alphabets (e.g., Japanese, Arabic).
Pros to translating URL slugs:
Local-language terms in the slug can reinforce topical relevance and match query strings, giving a small ranking and CTR lift when the keyword is part of the URL snippet.
Native-language URLs look familiar, are easier to read aloud or copy-paste, and signal that users are on the “right” version.
When titles, headings, on-page copy, and slug are all in the same language, the page sends an unambiguous language signal.
Shared links automatically carry meaningful anchor text (the slug) in the local language, which can help attract region-specific backlinks and improve social click-through.
Cons to translating URL slugs:
Every new language demands a slug translation and QA. Any copy updates require synchronized redirects across locales.
Changing a slug later (to fix a mistranslation or branding change) means 301s and a temporary performance dip; large-scale slug changes are expensive and error-prone.
Non-ASCII characters must be UTF-8 encoded (％E6％97％A5％E6％9C％AC), making links look “ugly” in raw form and occasionally breaking older analytics, ad-tracking, or e-mail systems.
Uniform path segmentation (“/product/123/”) is lost when each slug differs (“/produkt/123/”, “/producto/123/”). Dashboards and regex-based tracking need extra maintenance.
2. Don’t Forget Critical Technical Details
To account for the technical side of things, you must keep the following in mind:
Have the correct hreflang setup in place. Don’t forget the self-referencing tag for every page.
Create a GSC property and Bing Webmaster Tools account for every language/subdirectory. Configure language targeting.
Add language-specific XML sitemaps.
Use consistent language codes and canonical tags. Watch out for https vs. http and referencing the right language version of the domain.
Translate schema text fields (name, description) and priceCurrency.
Specify a fallback page and language with the x-default tag.
Localize the schema for each language, especially Organization, Product, FAQ, BreadcrumbList, and priceCurrency.
Use a CDN for fast page speed in every market. Consider local hosting or a CDN edge in countries where page speed is still slow.
Test page speed from different locales and devices with Google PageSpeed tools or webpagetest.org to account for markets where most users have slow devices.
Avoid automatic geo-redirects.
I will say, even with perfect technical optimization and localization, Google sometimes struggles to show the right URLs or even the domain in the right country.
I discuss some of the things you can do with Daan Aussems on LinkedIn:
Add the country to the meta title.
Use local case studies and authors.
Localize images and videos.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
3. Structure Your INTL SEO Team Right
When setting up your international SEO function, you’ll need to decide between two main structural approaches:
A centralized SEO team.
A centralized SEO team with regionally embedded specialists.
Choosing the right one depends on your organization’s resources, local market requirements, and the depth of localization you’ll pursue.
Option 1: Centralized SEO Team
In a centralized structure, one SEO team (typically in your home or core market) manages SEO across all international markets.
Pros:
Greater consistency in strategy, reporting, and standards.
Simplified internal communication and collaboration.
Easier to manage a cohesive brand narrative and keyword strategy.
Cons:
Lacking native insight might affect local keyword relevance.
Greater risk of cultural blind spots and missing nuances.
Depending extensively on translation/localization teams for accuracy.
When to pick this option:
Ideal if you’re early in the internationalization phase with limited internal resources or for situations where nuances between different regions aren’t highly sensitive.
Option 2: Centralized SEO Team + Regionally Embedded SEO Specialists
In this hybrid approach, you have one central strategy-setting team supported by local SEO specialists who are native to each target market.
A good middle ground might be a core (central) SEO team plus native speaker specialists dedicated to your highest-potential or highest-complexity markets.
Pros:
Balance of control and autonomy – central strategy but local tactical execution.
Ideal for keyword and content localization: Local specialists deeply understand culture and language nuances.
Potential conflict if regional priorities don’t align perfectly with global strategy.
When to pick this option:
Perfectly suited for large sites with complicated localized strategies, high cultural sensitivity, significant growth goals in international markets, and sufficient internal resourcing.
Regardless of which team structure you choose, clarity around reporting lines is essential. A clear organizational structure for most successful global companies often includes:
The overall SEO strategy (core global SEO) team typically reports to a head of growth or related executive.
Regional specialists embedded in specific markets report either directly or “dotted-line” horizontally into the global SEO lead, who is under a gobal growth or marketing department.
Regional content teams ideally report to a global head of brand & content or a similar branding/content position. Regional SEO specialists work horizontally as internal consultants/advisors. Their role involves keyword research, SEO recommendations, brief preparation, and ongoing performance analysis of regional performance.
This arrangement separates content production (managed by branding/content teams) and the optimization of that content (managed by SEO teams).
Successful international SEO workflows vary significantly by your business type.
Below are tailored recommendations clearly segmented by ecommerce and SaaS/digital product business models, since that makes up most of my readers here.
But if you’re in another industry and have questions about tailored SEO workflows or recommendations for your business type, drop your question to me via comment or mailbag (part of the premium subscription).
Ecommerce
Clearly communicate and optimize for regional purchasing expectations to increase trust and conversions:
Localized product content: Translate and culturally adapt product titles, descriptions, specifications, visuals, alt attributes, and schema fields. Check that each element resonates meaningfully in your target market.
Pricing and currency clarity: Display local currency by default based on the user’s location or preferences, and ensure prices reflect local market standards competitively.
Checkout localization: Localize checkout fields, input validations, zip/postal fields, phone number structures, and date formats. User trust quickly erodes if a payment form feels foreign or confusing.
Inventory and shipping transparency: Clearly communicate product availability and adjust your shipping timelines to reflect real conditions per market. If possible, offer intuitive region-aware dashboards that display stock availability locally. Use tables, calculators, or customizable widgets to guide users accurately on expected shipping speed and delivery charges.
Flexible payment methods: Marketborne payment preferences vary regionally – clearly research and implement local standards:
Latin America: Mercado Pago.
China: Alipay, WeChat Pay.
Europe (Netherlands): iDEAL, SEPA Direct Debit.
Germany: Klarna, SOFORT.
Japan/Korea: local banking transfer methods.
Duties and tax transparency: Show clear explanations about VAT, duties, and customs charges. Surprise costs lead users to abandon purchase flows. You may leverage duty calculators or explicitly highlight applicable import taxes directly at checkout.
SaaS And Digital Products
For global SaaS/digital products, localized trust emerges not just from content, but also from user experience framing and region-specific nuance:
Interface localization (website and app): Provide fully localized in-app interfaces, tooltips, messages, error dialogues, sub-menus, etc. Localization should seamlessly integrate with the overall UX flow, including subtle things like date formats, numbering conventions, and time zones.
Comprehensive documentation localization: At a minimum, translate key onboarding materials, help documents, FAQs, and in-app tutorials. Tailored documentation improves UX drastically by removing language-based friction in complex tasks.
Relevant regional thought leadership content: Adapt or create locally relevant content – if possible, base this content on specific region-based data or market insights. Share reports, studies, case studies, webinars, trend analyses, etc., highlighting local-specific usage narratives.
Localized social proof and testimonials: Highlight customers, logos, reviews, or testimonials reflecting regionally recognized brands and clients; strengthens credibility and reduces “foreign brand skepticism.”
Regional compliance and regulatory standards: Clearly map differences in regulatory compliance needs across markets; e.g., GDPR or Personal Information Protection Law (Japan), CCPA (California), electronic service provider regulations, accessibility standards, etc. Confirm you meet regional standards explicitly to minimize legal risk (and possible penalties).
I get this question a lot: When should I expand into an international SEO play?
Knowing when to move beyond your core domestic market can be just as critical as knowing how.
While growing slowly within your home market may feel safer or easier, you’re potentially leaving significant growth untapped.
At the same time, expanding prematurely into international markets might stretch resources thin and dilute your initial peak-market potential.
So, how should you discern when the time is ripe to expand internationally?
In some scenarios, opting to capture market share overseas before competing in a saturated domestic market can even become a strategic advantage, called counter-positioning.
Companies can rapidly establish strongholds in regions lacking dominant incumbents, leverage brand equity abroad first, and only then turn toward challenging larger opponents in the United States or more mature markets.
An example of this approach is StuDocu, a European-born study content-sharing site, versus the initially U.S.-oriented ed-tech giant Course Hero.
Rather than directly challenging Course Hero head-on within saturated American campuses, StuDocu methodically expanded into underserved European, Asian, Latin American, and Australian universities – regions that Course Hero gave lower priority.
This strategic “root growth” in international territories allowed StuDocu to scale rapidly, create a vast global user base, create defensible moats locally, and eventually build the brand equity necessary to mount an effective push into highly competitive markets, including the United States.
There are a few clear criteria every global growth leader should closely examine to inform their strategic expansion timing:
1. Traffic Opportunity (Search Demand)
Before investing heavily, ensure there’s a substantial unmet organic and paid search opportunity around your core offering and targeted keywords.
2. Brand Awareness Signals
Examine your analytics and search queries: Do you already get meaningful visits or searches from the target country? Strong brand indicators can accelerate your market entry.
Quantify current organic visits and branded keywords from those markets despite not actively targeting or marketing to them.
For example, if your analytics reveal repeated organic traffic from Germany with users searching explicitly for your company name or key terms, it signals existing awareness, early-adopter userbase, or even offline word-of-mouth that deserves deeper attention.
3. Competitive Dynamics
Evaluate how mature each prospective target market currently is and understand the competitive landscape deeply:
Who are the local or international incumbents dominating this particular market niche currently?
How strong are those websites from both a content and SEO quality standpoint?
Consider prioritizing up-and-coming markets or regions that are less penetrated by your primary competitors.
4. Market Size And Financial Opportunity
Validate economic logic through a comprehensive market-sizing exercise and initial return-on-investment (ROI) forecasts.
Markets vary broadly by total addressable market (TAM). Scrutinize total market population, GDP per capita, digital connectivity/internet penetration, and mobile saturation data (World Bank, Euromonitor, Statista).
5. Feasibility (Non-SEO Factors)
Even leading SEO and financial criteria scores can be blocked or undermined by inefficient operational, legal, or team-related feasibility realities towards a market.
Explicitly identify:
Legal/regulatory barriers: data protection (GDPR, LGPD specifics), product registration, certifications, licensing, and upfront legal costs.
Cultural nuances that affect product viability: Can product-market fit freeze or vanish redesigns that differ significantly internationally? Localization realities around payment, checkout, and currency complexities?
Shipment and fulfillment chains: Can product/service offer seamless local user experiences with reliable shipping speeds, payment providers, customer support language, and channels?
Internal or partner resourcing: Do current or justifiable investment resources (teams, budget, or executive priorities) align smoothly with engaged regional requirements?
I want to share a few other tools I’ve used over the years.
To evaluate the market as a whole:
Market Finder: Evaluates your business categories against the total number of searches (search volume), average disposable income, ease of doing business, and the size of the recommended Google Ad bid.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
To evaluate traffic potential and competitive saturation:
Similarweb Market Intelligence: Estimates monthly visits, engagement, and top referrers for any country/industry.
Semrush Market Explorer: Overlays search volume, paid spend, and audience demographics per market.
Ahrefs “Traffic Potential” + “Top Countries” reports: Quick read on how much of a keyword set sits outside your home region.
Sistrix Visibility Index by country: Reveals incumbent SERP strength; great for spotting “easy” regions.
Google Keyword Planner (but switch location filters): Still the cleanest directional gauge for non-English SERPs.
To evaluate purchasing power and market potential:
World Bank’s DataBank: GDP, internet penetration, card adoption, all exportable.
Euromonitor Passport: Consumer-spending forecasts across 100+ categories.
Statista Global Consumer Survey: Payment methods, brand awareness, category usage by country.
Google is making a big change to its domain structure. Soon, all country-specific Google domains will redirect to Google.com.
This change ties into earlier hints that Google may rely less on hreflang markup, showing how Google is changing its approach to international search.
Google Consolidates Domain Structure
Google announced plans to phase out country-specific domains like google.fr (France), google.ca (Canada), and google.co.jp (Japan). All these will eventually redirect to Google.com.
Google says in its announcement:
“Over the years, our ability to provide a local experience has improved. In 2017, we began providing the same experience with local results for everyone using Search, whether they were using google.com or their country’s ccTLD.”
Google explained that country-level domains are no longer needed because they can now deliver locally relevant results no matter which domain you use.
Implementation Timeline
Google will roll out this change slowly over the coming months, giving users time to adjust to the new system.
While the URL in your browser will change, Google says search will still work the same way.
Google stressed that the update “won’t affect the way Search works, nor will it change how we handle obligations under national laws.”
Connection to Hreflang Evolution
This domain change seems to be part of a bigger shift in how Google handles international content.
In July, Google’s Gary Illyes hinted that they might rely less on manual hreflang tags and more on automatic language detection.
“Ultimately, I would want less and less annotations, site annotations, and more automatically learned things.”
SEO professional Montse Cano pointed out this connection in a social media post, noting that “hreflang might actually change too due to improvements in AI.”
While no changes are confirmed, it’s something to watch for in the future.
Implications For SEO Professionals
This change affects search marketers in several ways, especially those working on international SEO:
Your analytics will show different referral patterns as traffic moves from country-specific domains to Google.com.
Along with less reliance on hreflang, website managers may have fewer technical tasks for international targeting.
Google seems more confident in automatically detecting the right content versions for users.
Users should get a more uniform experience across regions while still seeing localized results.
Next Steps
While Google is getting better at automatic detection, SEO pros should still:
Keep using hreflang tags until Google officially says otherwise
Make sure your site clearly signals language and regional targeting
Watch your analytics for traffic pattern changes during the transition
Think about how this affects SEO strategies that relied on country-specific domains
Key Takeaway
This change shows Google is more confident in understanding context, language, and user intent without needing explicit signals like separate domains.
Combined with discussions about automatic language detection, Google’s AI seems ready to handle work that once required manual setup.
SEO professionals should see this as part of search technology’s natural evolution. Stay alert to how these changes affect your international search visibility and traffic.
The long-brewing conflict between Google and EU regulators has reached a new milestone.
The European Commission has officially issued preliminary findings that Google has violated the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in two key areas that directly impact digital marketers and app developers.
What’s Happening With Google Search?
Despite Google’s algorithm tweaks over the past year, EU regulators aren’t satisfied. They claim Google still gives preferential treatment to its verticals, such as Google Shopping, Hotels, Flights, and other specialized results.
The Commission called out Google for displaying its services “at the top of Google Search results or on dedicated spaces, with enhanced visual formats and filtering mechanisms” that third-party services don’t enjoy.
If you’ve been wondering why your clients’ listings seem pushed down by Google’s products, EU regulators are validating those concerns.
Google Play Also Under Fire
In a separate finding, the Commission claims Google Play doesn’t allow app developers to freely direct users to alternative channels for better deals or direct purchases.
For marketers working with apps or managing app-based clients, this could eventually lead to new opportunities to reach users outside Google’s ecosystem without the steep Play Store fees.
What This Means For Digital Marketers
If the findings are confirmed and Google is forced to make changes, we could see significant shifts in search visibility and ranking opportunities:
More prominent placement for third-party comparison sites in travel, shopping, and financial verticals
Reduced visual emphasis on Google’s services
Potentially more organic visibility for businesses currently competing with Google’s featured elements
For app marketers, we might see new options for communicating with users about direct purchase options and alternatives to Google Play’s payment system.
Timeline and Next Steps
Google now has the opportunity to respond to these preliminary findings, and the company has consistently maintained that its changes already comply with the DMA.
In previous statements, Google’s EMEA competition director cautioned that further modifications could negatively impact user experience.
The Bigger Picture
This escalation follows the DMA’s implementation in March 2024, which designated Google as a “gatekeeper” alongside other tech giants. The law specifically targets large platforms that serve as critical intermediaries between businesses and consumers.
If Google fails to address the Commission’s concerns, it could face penalties of up to 10% of its global annual revenue. This prospect will likely motivate changes to how search results appear in Europe.
We’ll monitor this situation as it develops and provide updates on how changes might impact your search and app marketing strategies.
The European Commission is reportedly preparing to charge Google with not fully complying with the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
According to sources, Google’s recent tweaks to its search algorithms haven’t satisfied regulators’ requirements, prompting the EU to step up its scrutiny.
Key Details
Under the DMA, tech companies are expected to offer a level playing field in the EU.
The probe on Google focuses on whether the company is pushing its services, such as Google Shopping, Flights, and Hotels, over competitors.
Regulators are concerned that by giving these in-house services a leg up, Google could be stifling competition.
Failure to adhere to the DMA rules could cost a company up to 10% of its global annual revenue, which shows how significant the potential penalties could be.
Google’s Response
In response to regulatory pressure, Google has gradually changed its European search results.
These adjustments address complaints from price-comparison sites, airlines, hotels, and small retailers.
Google details the changes it’s made in response to the DMA in a blog post. Key changes include:
Greater Visibility for Comparison Sites: Google says it’s made over 20 changes to increase the visibility of comparison sites for flights, hotels, and shopping.
Balanced Search Options: Google has introduced new units that let users choose between results that lead to comparison sites or those that go directly to supplier websites.
New Ad Options for Competitors: Google has launched new ad formats for comparison sites. These allow them to directly show more detailed information, like prices and images, in search results.
Testing Simpler Search Formats: Google tested simpler search formats in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia. They removed features like hotel location maps and returned to a basic list of ten links to see how users reacted.
However, these measures have been criticized as not going far enough to level the playing field.
Google’s EMEA competition director, Oliver Bethell, has stated that the company is working toward a balanced solution with the Commission. However, he warned that further changes might negatively impact the search experience.
This investigation isn’t only targeting Google. The EU is casting a wide net over major tech companies, with similar DMA probes against companies like Apple and Meta.
Broader Context
These potential charges come amid ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Europe, adding another layer to the situation.
U.S. President Donald Trump has openly supported American tech giants, arguing that fines imposed by the EU are essentially a disguised tariff. This political pressure has raised concerns about how external influences might impact regulatory decisions.
The upcoming months will be crucial for Google and other tech companies under the EU’s scrutiny. Stay tuned as we monitor this evolving story and its implications for the SEO community.
Expanding your Google Ads campaigns to international markets sounds exciting – until you realize just how many settings can make or break your results.
If you assume that what works in your home country will work everywhere, think again. From currency mismatches to targeting mishaps, international PPC comes with a unique set of challenges.
To avoid costly mistakes, here are the key Google Ads settings you need to check before launching or optimizing an international campaign.
1. Location Targeting: Are You Reaching The Right Audience?
This may seem like a no-brainer, but many advertisers forget to refine location settings properly.
By default, Google Ads includes users who “show interest in” a location – meaning people outside your target country might see your ads.
What to do: Change your location targeting to “Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations” if you only want to reach users physically present in your chosen market. This helps avoid wasting spend on irrelevant clicks.
2. Ad Scheduling: Does It Align With Local Time Zones?
Your ad schedule may be perfectly optimized for your home market, but time zones shift everything when running internationally.
What’s peak conversion time in New York might be the middle of the night in Paris.
What to do: Set your ad schedule based on the local time zone of the targeted market, ensuring your ads run during business hours or when your audience is most active.
Another best practice is to keep your international PPC campaigns in their own ad account, which can be nested underneath an MCC account.
That way, you can set your time zone at the local time zone at the account level and not have to do complicated time zone conversions if they were to all be in the same ad account.
Trust me, a separate ad account will save you so much time in the long run!
3. Currency And Conversion Tracking: Are Your Numbers Making Sense?
Imagine checking your return on ad spend (ROAS) and thinking you’re crushing it, only to realize later that you’ve been calculating revenue in USD while spending in GBP. Ouch.
What to do: Make sure your Google Ads billing currency matches your reporting metrics. Also, confirm that your conversion values reflect the correct currency to avoid misleading performance insights.
This is another case in point for having a separate Google Ads account for international PPC campaigns, instead of housing every campaign under one ad account.
4. Language Settings: Are Your Ads Reaching The Right Speakers?
Google’s language targeting doesn’t translate your ads. It only determines who sees them based on their browser settings.
If you’re targeting users in Spain but only using English keywords, you’re missing a huge chunk of potential customers.
What to do: Set up separate campaigns for different languages within a region, using properly localized ad copy and keywords that match how people search.
5. Keyword Match Types: Are They Performing Well Across Markets?
Search behavior varies by country. A broad match keyword that works in the U.S. might trigger irrelevant searches in Germany. Even worse, direct translations of keywords can change meaning entirely.
What to do: Research local search behavior before deciding on match types. Use exact and phrase match strategically to control spend in new markets, and analyze search term reports frequently.
Have a solid negative keyword strategy in place at the start to mitigate any keyword match types going rogue.
6. Bidding Strategies: Are They Aligned With Market Conditions?
Bidding strategies that work in one country might not translate well to another due to competition levels, cost-per-click (CPC) differences, and conversion rates.
For example, say you’re using a Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) bid strategy for your United States campaigns, and the CPA is set at $50.
It would be unwise to set that same CPA target on international PPC campaigns without knowing purchase behaviors in the region you’re targeting.
There may be lesscompetition in those areas, so you may want to start with a lower CPA target to avoid overspending.
What to do: Start with manual or “Maximize Clicks” to understand market dynamics before switching to automated bidding.
If using Smart Bidding, give the algorithm time to learn and adjust based on local performance trends. Understanding your international markets is key when getting started with Smart Bidding.
7. Product Feed Optimization: Is Your Shopping Feed Localized?
For Google Shopping campaigns, simply adding a product feed to a new country isn’t enough.
Product titles, descriptions, and even pricing can impact how well your ads perform.
But localization goes beyond just translation – it’s about using the terminology and structure that aligns with how local shoppers search.
For example, a “sneaker” in the U.S. is a “trainer” in the UK, and European shoppers may prioritize brand and material in product titles more than U.S. shoppers do.
Additionally, some countries have strict rules on tax and shipping display, meaning incorrect settings could lead to product disapprovals.
What to do: Optimize product feeds for each country you plan to run ads in. Ensure titles use local terms, pricing is in the correct currency, and required attributes (such as tax settings) are properly configured.
Also, check product imagery. Some countries have cultural sensitivities that may affect what’s acceptable to showcase.
8. Regulatory And Compliance Settings: Are You Following Local Laws?
Different countries have unique regulations for digital advertising, from GDPR in the EU to stricter ad policies in regions like China. Violating these can not only get your ads disapproved but could also lead to legal trouble.
For example, the EU’s GDPR rules require explicit user consent for data collection, meaning that cookie-based remarketing might require additional compliance measures.
Meanwhile, certain industries, like finance or healthcare, have extra advertising restrictions in countries like Canada and Australia.
What to do: Familiarize yourself with country-specific regulations and ensure your ads, landing pages, and data collection methods comply.
Google may also restrict certain industries or ad types in specific markets. Google’s advertising policies page is a good place to start, but consulting a legal expert in your target market is even better.
9. Payment Methods: Are You Aware Of Billing Differences?
Google Ads billing methods vary by country, and some regions have restrictions on payment types.
Not all credit cards or invoicing options available in the United States work in other countries.
This account setting is yet another reason why you should consider a separate Google Ads account per region that you plan to run ads in.
What to do: Before launching, check Google Ads’ payment options for each country and ensure your billing setup won’t disrupt your campaigns (if running international ads in the same account).
10. Audience Targeting: Are You Using The Right Signals?
Your U.S. audience lists might not translate well internationally due to differences in customer behavior and market dynamics.
If you’re using imported lookalike audiences or U.S.-based remarketing lists, they may underperform because user intent differs significantly between markets.
For example, an in-market audience for “luxury watches” in the U.S. may skew toward younger professionals. Whereas in Japan, that same audience might lean more toward older, high-income shoppers.
What to do: Build new audience lists for each market rather than relying on U.S.-based data.
Use Google’s audience insights to refine targeting based on regional behavior and test performance before scaling.
11. Ad Copy And Ad Assets: Have You Adjusted For Cultural Nuances?
A direct translation of your ad copy isn’t enough; cultural differences impact how messages resonate.
A phrase that works in one country could come across as awkward, or even offensive, elsewhere.
For instance, humor that performs well in U.S. ads may not have the same impact in Germany, where direct and factual messaging tends to work better.
Similarly, a “limited-time offer” urgency tactic in Japan could feel too aggressive, as consumers there often value trust and relationships over hard selling.
What to do: Localize your ad copy beyond just translation. Adapt messaging to fit local customs, humor, and expectations. Also, check that ad assets (like callouts or structured snippets) make sense in the market.
12. Competitive Analysis: Are Your Benchmarks Realistic?
While this may not be a direct Google Ads setting, I felt it was worth including because competitive analysis is crucial when launching in new markets.
CPCs, conversion rates, and ad competition vary significantly by country. If you assume costs and performance will mirror your home market, you might be in for a surprise.
What to do: Use tools like Google Ads Auction Insights, industry benchmarks, and other competitor analysis tools to set realistic expectations for performance in each country.
13. Landing Pages: Are They Properly Localized?
Again, this isn’t a Google Ads setting to check, but because your ads have to go to some sort of landing page, this is another crucial check before launching your international PPC campaigns.
Sending international users to a generic English landing page (or worse, an untranslated one) is a surefire way to tank conversion rates.
Even if the international region you’re targeting is an English-speaking country, they still may use localized language or phrases different from the United States.
What to do: Ensure landing pages are fully localized with correct language, currency, cultural references, and legal disclaimers. Even small details like using “shopping cart” vs. “basket” can impact conversion rates.
Get The Details Right Before Scaling
Running Google Ads internationally is more than just expanding targeting. It requires a deep understanding of regional differences in search behavior, competition, and user expectations.
A small oversight in settings can drain budgets fast, so double-checking these key areas ensures your campaigns run smoothly.
With the right approach, international PPC campaigns can unlock massive growth potential.
Just make sure Google Ads isn’t working against you because of pre-applied settings that don’t align with your new market.
