There are many challenges with managing content on global websites, so anything you can do to increase collaboration and reduce the workload for other teams will be appreciated.
A variety of elements contribute to effective content on your market-specific websites, with much of the focus being on the quality of the translation and localization. Still, those are not the only factors for success.
While the quality of localization is important, other factors also impact the quality – ranging from content consistency to cultural sensitivity – each impacting customer engagement.
Beyond being a great way to manage content ideation and creation flow, globally focused-content calendars can benefit your organization in other ways.
3 Reasons You Need A Global Content Calendar
Reason 1 – Presenting Relevant Content
In terms of customer engagement, showing relevant content to the audience is one of the most important factors in engaging content.
Needless to say, not many people are interested in purchasing items that are not in season, so for example, promoting short sleeves and shorts during the winter in the Southern Hemisphere is never a good idea.
Reason 2 – Local Business Objectives
We also need to consider the business objectives to accommodate each local site’s marketing and promotional needs.
I often hear from local teams that their localized website doesn’t work for them. Yes, it is written in the local language, but the content is not designed or adjusted to the local market or does not align with their sales or marketing goals.
Reason 3 – Product Launches And Availability
Another key consideration for your content calendar is to account for market cross-over, where a new product is only launched in one market, but trade press may promote it, creating demand in other markets.
For example, if you sell running shoes and your newest model is worn by top runners in the New York Marathon, you can guarantee that it will be seen and wanted by runners around the world.
Markets must be aware of the launch and have a plan to try to deal with the increased interest even if the product is not locally available.
While the product may not be available in every market, you can create a signup or point them to similarly available products to capture this interest, rather than offering no information.
What Should Be In The Global Content Calendar?
I find it extremely effective to have and share a global content calendar, if for nothing more than helping to organize the content schedule for each site.
The global content calendar should include and align to accommodate:
The products included may vary, but you can get the scale from centralizing similar messages.
All markets have back-to-school and similar holidays, so accounting for them helps ensure you have foundational content available as needed.
It also ensures you are not launching site releases or conflicting messages that may negatively impact a peak season in another region.
For marketing and promotional reasons, such as standardizing messages and ensuring content is available, it is also wise to include key events and activities on the calendar. For example:
Promotions.
Events, conferences, exhibits.
Products and services release.
You cannot stop people from talking across markets on social media. Hence, it is important that global markets are aware of key events and are able to leverage them to capture leads and sales, but also explain why similar opportunities and discounts are not available locally.
While not directly related to the actual management of content, it is also helpful to indicate planned website updates/release dates on the calendar.
This lets you know when you might not be able to update information on the website, ensuring updates are made prior to any blackout periods.
How To Use The Global Content Calendar
The purpose of having the global content calendar is to create an information source to give websites flexibility in showing the relevant content to each local country.
Based on the calendar, each site can identify which product and service pages to show on the top page – or to display at the top of the product pages and in the search results.
This process is about managing existing (localized) content to push on the website. Since there is no need for the local sites to create new content to meet the seasonal requirements, it minimizes the burden on the local teams.
There are some points to consider in order to keep the global content calendar effective and easy to adopt by the markets.
Make It Easy To Read And Use
While the calendar should include the information for all markets and websites, it can get unwieldy if you have many local sites.
Adding a filter function is a great way to make it user-friendly.
In addition, use color codes, symbols, etc., to make it easier to read and identify relevant opportunities for the users.
Show On/Off Dates
From the content management point of view, it is also good to show the dates when the content should be promoted and when it needs to be taken down.
For example, the date range for Mother’s Day-related items to appear on the home page, and even an email notice to the team to confirm it has been updated once the event is over.
Centrally Manage The Calendar
The calendar should be made available to all local teams. At the same time, it is generally a good idea to manage it centrally.
This does not mean the local teams cannot edit their local information.
By managing the calendar in one place, you prevent duplicates or different versions of calendars from being generated.
Content Flow/Process With Calendar
The calendar can also be used for other content-related work items, including prioritizing new content translation/localization schedules and releases and updates.
Summary
Even in a decentralized organization, some centralization of core content can save significant time and resources rather than needing to be created many times.
Organizing and projecting content needs in advance allows you to plan better for its creation and optimization.
By having your plans better organized, markets can take advantage of what has already been created or ensure that their unique needs are communicated and that content relevant to each local market is accounted for and presented in the best way possible.
Managing a global content calendar is not intended to disrupt the content workflow but to help organize it and make it more effective.
Most importantly, it ensures that what is created and presented in the local markets is the best to inform and engage the local consumers to drive sales.
In a significant development, Google Analytics 4 is deemed legal in Europe following the recent adoption of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework by the European Commission.
The news comes amid warnings from the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) concerning potential surveillance risks associated with GA4.
The legal status of GA4 in Europe and the IMY’s warning are interconnected parts of a larger global narrative about data privacy, protection regulations, and transatlantic data transfers.
EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Adopted
The European Commission ratified the new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, affirming that the United States provides equivalent protection for personal data transferred from the E.U. as supplied within the Union.
This decision enables safe data transmission from the E.U. to U.S. companies involved in the Framework without necessitating supplementary data protection measures.
The Framework introduces stringent safeguards that address concerns previously raised by the European Court of Justice. These safeguards restrict the access of U.S. intelligence services to E.U. data, confining it to what is essential and proportional and establishing a Data Protection Review Court (DPRC). E.U. citizens will have access to this court.
Enhanced Safeguards Over Previous Mechanisms
The new Framework offers significant improvements compared to the previous Privacy Shield mechanism. For instance, if the DPRC determines data has been collected violating the new safeguards, it can order the deletion of such data.
U.S. companies importing data from the E.U. must adhere to obligations complementing the new safeguards concerning government access to data.
Swedish Privacy Watchdog Warns Against Google Analytics
The announcement of the new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework coincides with warnings issued by IMY for companies using GA4, citing concerns over surveillance risks posed by the U.S. government.
The authority’s investigation into four Swedish companies revealed violations of GDPR’s consent and data transfer requirements, leading to penalties and orders to stop using Google Analytics.
In response to the IMY’s decision, Google emphasized that Google Analytics doesn’t identify or track specific individuals across the web. The company stated website publishers are responsible for compliance and ethical data use, while Google provides safeguards, controls, and resources.
Statement From The Commission President
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen commented:
“The new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework will ensure safe data flows for Europeans and bring legal certainty to companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Today we take an important step to provide trust to citizens that their data is safe, to deepen our economic ties between the EU and the U.S., and at the same time to reaffirm our shared values.”
Framework Compliance Protocol For U.S. Companies
U.S. companies can join the Framework by committing to comply with a specific set of privacy obligations.
These include deleting personal data when it’s no longer necessary for its original purpose and ensuring continued protection when data is shared with third parties.
E.U. citizens will have several avenues for redress if U.S. companies mishandle their data. This includes free, independent dispute resolution mechanisms and an arbitration panel.
Safeguarding Access To Transferred Data
The U.S. legal framework provides several safeguards regarding data access by U.S. public authorities. Access to data is limited to what is necessary and proportionate to protect national security.
E.U. citizens will have access to an independent and impartial redress mechanism concerning the collection and use of their data by U.S. intelligence agencies, including the newly established DPRC. This court will independently investigate and resolve complaints.
These safeguards will facilitate more general transatlantic data flows as they apply when data is transferred using other tools, such as standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules.
Future Steps
Adopting the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission’s ruling doesn’t render the concerns raised by the Swedish Authority irrelevant. The two events address different aspects of the broader data privacy issue.
The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework is designed to ensure general data protection for E.U. citizens when their data is transferred to the U.S. It provides safeguards and establishes the Data Protection Review Court (DPRC).
While the new Framework should improve data protection, individual companies remain responsible for ensuring their practices comply with GDPR and other relevant regulations.
Even with the new Framework, companies must stay vigilant in managing their data privacy practices.
In Summary
While the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework is a significant step towards better data privacy, it doesn’t automatically resolve specific issues related to individual companies or services, such as those raised by the IMY about Google Analytics.
The functioning of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework will be subject to periodic reviews conducted by the European Commission, European data protection authorities, and competent U.S. authorities. The first review is scheduled within a year of the implementation of the adequacy decision.
Google announced its decision to remove links to Canadian news from its Search, News, and Discover products in response to Canada’s recently enacted Bill C-18.
Unfortunately, we’ve made the difficult decision that when Bill C-18 takes effect, we will remove Canadian news links from our Search, News and Discover products. https://t.co/ilWrF1uRuSpic.twitter.com/wMdoignNlC
In this article, we will delve into the Online News Act and how Bill C-18 has prompted major tech platforms such as Google and Meta to implement changes to search and social platforms that will impact Canadians’ access to online news.
What Is The Online News Act
Bill C-18, known as the Online News Act, is a piece of legislation introduced in Canada to regulate digital intermediaries such as search engines and social media platforms that disseminate news content, addressing the relationship between these digital platforms and news businesses.
At its core, the Act aims to establish a framework for news businesses in Canada to negotiate compensation with digital platforms that distribute their content. This is in response to perceived imbalances in bargaining power between these entities.
News businesses eligible to initiate this bargaining process must meet specific criteria, including operation within Canada and employing at least two journalists.
If negotiations are unproductive, the Act provides for a final-offer arbitration process. This involves an independent panel reviewing final offers from both parties and making a binding decision, considering the value contributed by both the digital platform and the news business.
The Act is framed to align with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It aims to be consistent with freedom of expression and journalistic independence.
Big Tech’s Response
In response to Bill C-18, Google and Meta have taken the significant step of removing news content from their platforms in Canada.
With the Act’s framework requiring negotiations for compensation and the potential of binding arbitration decisions, these tech giants may be concerned about such engagements’ unpredictability and financial implications.
Their decision to remove news content could indicate how they weigh the cost-benefit ratio of complying with the new regulatory environment versus the value they derive from distributing news content in the Canadian market.
It also highlights the challenges and complexities in finding a middle ground that satisfies both the interests of digital platforms and news businesses within regulatory frameworks.
Google’s Official Statement On Removing News Links In Search
In a recent blog post, Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs for Google & Alphabet, stated:
The Government has not given us reason to believe that the regulatory process will be able to resolve structural issues with the legislation. As a result, we have informed the Government that we have made the difficult decision that when the law takes effect we will be removing links to Canadian news from our Search, News, and Discover products and will no longer be able to operate Google News Showcase in Canada.
Google cited concerns over the legislation’s requirement for payment for displaying news links, which it refers to as a “link tax.”
According to the recent update, Google saw this aspect of the law as leading to product uncertainty and exposing the company to unlimited financial liability.
Furthermore, Google noted that the Canadian Government had not provided assurances that the regulatory process could rectify what the company views as structural issues within the legislation.
Despite its stated commitment to Canadian journalism through programs and partnerships, including the Google News Showcase, Google deems the current form of Bill C-18 unworkable. Thus, Google removed news links, a process it had been testing in early 2023.
The company disclosed its efforts in providing feedback, recommending amendments, and endorsing an alternative model involving an independent fund for journalism.
However, Google claimed that the suggestions were not considered, leading to concerns over the law’s impact on access to news and journalist reach in Canada.
The company aspires to maintain transparency with Canadians and publishers but expresses apprehension over the consequences of Bill C-18 should the Government fail to address its concerns moving forward.
Based on data from Similarweb, news and media outlets receive an average of 20% (or more) of traffic from organic search. Google has 92% of the search market share in Canada.
Screenshot from Similarweb, June 2023
Meta Will Not Negotiate With Canada Over Bill C-18
In a CBC News interview, Rachel Curran, Head of Public Policy for Meta Canada, discussed Meta’s response to the Online News Act.
Meta also posted an update with its decision to terminate the availability of news content on Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada.
The company conducted product tests to prepare for this move, affecting a small portion of Canadian users. Meta emphasized that while news content will be unavailable, other services and products, including connection with friends and family, business tools, and community support features, will operate normally.
Additionally, Meta stated that it would maintain its efforts to combat misinformation through its global fact-checking network.
According to Meta, the changes would impact Canadian and international news outlets. While these outlets would still have access to their accounts and pages and can post news links and content, some content will not be visible to users in Canada.
Nick Chegg, Meta’s President of Global Affairs, released a statement on the effect these changes would have on news outlets.
We estimate that Facebook Feed sent registered news publishers in Canada more than 1.9 billion clicks in the 12 months to April 2022. This amounts to free marketing we estimate is worth more than $230 million. Publishers choose to share their content because it drives traffic to their websites. It helps them sell more subscriptions, grow their audience and display their ads to more people than they might have otherwise.
Meta was vocal in criticizing the Online News Act, describing it as fundamentally flawed for overlooking their platforms’ dynamics and users’ preferences.
The company regarded the legislation as not considering Meta’s platforms’ value to news publishers.
According to Statcounter, Facebook and Instagram hold almost 60% of the social media market share in Canada.
Screenshot from Statcounter, June 2023
The Future OF Online News In Canada
The enactment of Canada’s Online News Act, Bill C-18, marks a critical juncture in the relationship between digital platforms and news businesses.
The law addresses the imbalances in bargaining power and compensates news outlets for their content. However, the responses from Google and Meta indicate a reluctance from tech giants to adapt to the new regulatory framework, leading to their removal of Canadian news content.
This development raises essential questions about the future of news dissemination through digital platforms in Canada and the evolving dynamics of regulation, technology, and journalism.
The effectiveness and consequences of Bill C-18 will be closely watched in Canada and others grappling with similar issues.
For years, Google has been the main focus of most websites’ search marketing efforts. In fact, when it comes to search engine optimization, most companies only think of Google.
It is also a known fact that in some countries, there are other search engines that you need to consider. I’m sure that many readers have heard about Baidu in China, Naver in South Korea, and Yahoo! in Japan as the popular search engines.
These websites are super focused on local audiences and not easy to work with unless you have the language capability and understanding of how the services are set up. For that reason, they have scared away many website owners outside their respective countries.
Even though the Asian market is by far the largest online market in the world, information about the market is not as visible as it is for the U.S. or European markets.
This makes the Asian market more mysterious than it should be.
Recently, there have been some significant changes in search engine market shares and user activities, which could provide opportunities to businesses that have been timid about targeting these countries.
First, let’s understand a little more about the locally unique search engines: Baidu, Naver, and Yahoo! Japan.
Baidu.com
Since it was launched in 2000, Baidu has been the most widely used search engine in China.
In order to target Chinese audiences using Baidu, you need a Chinese-language website that complies with the Chinese government’s requirement to display the website’s registration number.
Having a “.cn” ccTLD and/or hosting websites in China are not requirements, but they definitely help with indexing and ranking.
Naver.com
Naver is a locally grown search engine in South Korea that started in 1999.
Unlike Google, Naver is more like a portal site with many non-search content and functions. The search results on Naver are quite unique.
It contains several blocks of different content types, including shopping, news, blog, videos, images, and web pages. The organic web page results are not prominent, and the ads are very visible. For these reasons, foreign companies often struggle to gain organic traffic from Naver.
Yahoo.co.jp
Yahoo! Japan initially started as Yahoo’s Japanese site and became a Japanese-owned company in 2018. It is still one of the popular websites in Japan.
Like Naver, Yahoo! Japan is a portal site with plenty of non-search content and services, including auctions, travel bookings, FAQs, and emails.
While the company itself provides its ad services, Google has been powering its organic search results since 2010.
The Shifts In Search Engine Popularity
Although the above sites are still popular, the search activities have shifted recently, especially in the last 12 months, creating new opportunities for businesses to leverage other search engines for market access.
Latest Search Engine Market Shares
China
Baidu’s domination of the search landscape has been declining for the past few quarters, dropping from 76% in June 2022 to 49% in March 2023.
Baidu still holds strong with over 64.39% share in mobile search, primarily due to how well it is integrated into the handset infrastructure through its numerous apps and services.
Both Bing and Sogou have cannibalized Baidu’s desktop search market share. Bing’s desktop search share in China has been growing over the past few months, with a bump to 28% since deploying its new AI features.
My B2B clients have seen a measurable increase in searches and traffic from China via Bing in the past few months, increasing efforts to maximize the reach of Bing.
Western businesses should also jump on this opportunity to expand their reach in China using Bing. Unlike Baidu’s Webmaster Tools access challenges, you can easily submit sitemaps and monitor issues in Bing’s English Webmaster Tools interface.
South Korea
Naver was early to the party in integrating AI into its platform. It did so in late 2021 to support a significant shift in South Korean search behaviors becoming more “exploratory,” with users going deeper into topics that aligned with their interests and search intent.
Naver saw a significant increase in these exploratory searches, accounting for nearly 65% of all queries.
This was followed up by the launch of Naver’s AiRSearch “Smart Block Innovation,” which leverages AI analysis of content, data, and deep user insights to generate blocks of highly relevant results eliminating the need for multiple search terms to present an optimal result.
Despite Naver’s innovations, the March 2023 Search Engine Market Share report indicates Google has gained significant ground in South Korea, garnering 59% share over Naver’s 35%. According to Statista, the share split is even greater, with Google capturing 71% to Naver’s 24%.
Google’s growth in the market creates an opportunity to directly connect with Korean searchers in a way not previously possible.
Japan
It is more important than ever to ensure your Japanese content is well-indexed and optimized for Google. With almost 80% market share, especially on mobile, from powering organic search in Yahoo! Japan, and its own growth as a search engine in Japan, Google is critical for connecting with Japanese consumers.
Google Japan has deployed all the shopping features to help businesses reach consumers, but often at a significantly lower average cost per click (CPC) than in the U.S. or Europe.
Bing’s Japan market share has been trending at 3% for the past years. However, new data from Statcounter seems to indicate its new AI features have gained some interest from Japanese users, increasing its market share to 7% and cannibalizing traffic from Yahoo!.
What This Means To The Website Owners (SEO/PPC)
These shifts in the growth of non-local search engines increase opportunities for businesses to reach these markets using assets and techniques they already have in place.
It is now more important to implement technical SEO fixes to increase indexing by both Google and Bing, as well as ensure your websites are mobile-friendly and load as fast as possible to engage users searching primarily on mobile devices in these markets.
Beyond China, Japan, and Korea, significant opportunities are emerging in Southeast Asia. The region consists of 11 countries with a total population of 600 million people at varied economic levels – but with growing disposable income.
Southeast Asian markets represented half of the top 10 retail ecommerce growth markets in 2022, and they are projected to generate over $100 billion in retail sales in 2023.
Covid lockdowns forced consumers to shop online, rapidly expanding ecommerce adoption and logistics infrastructures in the region.
National governments made significant investments in connectivity, digital payments, ecommerce platforms, and policy changes to foster ecommerce adoption and growth in the region.
Consumer behaviors have shifted as well, with over 40% of consumers trying at least one new brand since Covid, as compared to only 23% in the U.S.
In Vietnam, social ecommerce has grown significantly, with influencers driving product adoption in fashion and beauty – and price being a secondary consideration.
The region offers new opportunities for brands to reach interested consumers directly through their own ecommerce initiatives, as well as through several growing marketplaces like Shopee, Tokopedia, and Lazada that sell a wide range of products and handle transactions and logistics.
Shopee has quickly emerged as the fourth largest marketplace after Amazon, eBay, and Rakuten, despite its focus on Southeast Asia.
Digital ad spending in the region increased by 64%, further highlighting the digital platform’s ability and cost-effectiveness to connect and engage with consumers. The growth has been across CPG, fashion, and electronics categories.
Conclusion
Over the past few years, the digital disruption in Asia has been significant through rapid ecommerce adoption, technology shifts, and demands of consumers, creating new opportunities for those businesses that were previously challenged by language and resources to target these markets directly.
Now is the time to review your analytics and Google Search Console data to see if you have benefited from the search engine share realignment in the region and if it makes sense to put additional attention to localized content, ad budgets, or specific initiatives to target these markets.
Google has started temporarily restricting news results for approximately four percent of randomly selected Canadian users in tests that will last five weeks.
The decision directly responds to an online news bill called C-18, currently under debate in the Canadian parliament.
The bill introduced last spring would require internet companies like Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for using their content.
Bill C-18 is based on similar legislation in Australia and would allow binding arbitration if the tech companies refuse to pay publishers.
The tests will affect web search and the Discover feature on Android devices. A Google spokesperson confirmed the testing.
Google Criticizes “Link Tax”
Google has been critical of Bill C-18, also called The Online News Act, since it was proposed in 2022.
The search company claims the “link tax” legislation would harm Google, Canadian news p2ublishers, and readers.
Google also believes that the proposed law would set a bad precedent for other countries to follow, potentially harming the open nature of the internet.
Canada’s Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that the bill could force Google to pay approximately CAD 329.2 million (or roughly USD 242.99 million) to news publishers yearly.
This would cover around 30% of publishers’ editorial costs.
In contrast, Google’s search revenues amounted to $42.60 billion in the fourth quarter of last year alone.
Google’s Decision To Block News Raises Concern
This move has sparked concerns from publishers relying on news content to drive website traffic, as blocking the content could result in fewer visitors.
Google’s decision to stop showing news has worried people about censorship and the right to know.
There is a lot of talk in Canada about controlling what’s online while letting people express themselves.
If this law passes, it will change how things work online in Canada, which could impact publishers who work there. As things go on, people in the industry need to stay updated and change how they operate if they need to.
Yandex is the search engine with majority market share in Russia and the fourth largest search engine in the world.
On January 27, 2023, it suffered what is arguably one of the largest data leaks that a modern tech company has endured in many years, but is the second leak in less than a decade.
In 2015, a former Yandex employee attempted to sell Yandex’s search engine code on the black market for around $30,000.
The initial leak in January this year revealed 1,922 ranking factors, of which more than 64% were listed as unused or deprecated (superseded and best avoided).
This was just the file labeled kernel, but as the SEO community and I delved deeper, more files were found that combined contain approximately 17,800 ranking factors.
When it comes to practicing SEO for Yandex, the guide I wrote two years ago, for the most part still applies.
Yandex, like Google, has always been public with its algorithm updates and changes, and in recent years how it has adopted machine learning.
Notable updates from the past two-three years include:
A fresh rollout and assumed update of the PF filter.
On a personal note, this data leak is like a second Christmas.
Since January 2020, I’ve run an SEO news website as a hobby dedicated to covering Yandex SEO and search news in Russia with 600+ articles, so this is probably the peak event of the hobby site.
I’ve also spoken twice at the Optimization conference – the largest SEO conference in Russia.
This is also a good test to see how closely Yandex’s public statements match the codebase secrets.
In 2019, working with Yandex’s PR team I was able to interview engineers in their Search team and I asked a number of questions sourced from the wider Western SEO community.
Whilst Yandex is primarily known for its presence in Russia, the search engine also has a presence in Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Georgia.
The data leak was believed to be politically motivated and the actions of a rogue employee, and contains a number of code fragments from Yandex’s monolithic repository, Arcadia.
Within the 44GB of leaked data, there’s information relating to a number of Yandex products including Search, Maps, Mail, Metrika, Disc, and Cloud.
the contents of the archive (leaked code base) correspond to the outdated version of the repository – it differs from the current version used by our services
And:
It is important to note that the published code fragments also contain test algorithms that were used only within Yandex to verify the correct operation of the services.
So how much of this code base is actively used is questionable.
Yandex has also revealed that during their investigation and audit, they found a number of errors that violate their own internal principles, so it is likely that portions of this leaked code (that are in current use) may be changing in the near future.
Factor Classification
Yandex classifies its ranking factors into three categories.
This has been outlined in Yandex’s public documentation for some time, but I feel is worth including here as it better helps us understand the ranking factor leak.
Static factors – Factors that are related directly to the website, e.g. inbound backlinks, inbound internal links, headers, ads ratio.
Dynamic factors – Factors that are related to both the website and the search query, e.g. text relevance, keyword inclusions, TF*IDF.
User search related factors – Factors relating to the user query, e.g. where is the user located, query language, intent modifiers.
The ranking factors in the document are tagged to match the corresponding category, with TG_STATIC and TG_DYNAMIC, and then TG_QUERY_ONLY, TG_QUERY, TG_USER_SEARCH, and TG_USER_SEARCH_ONLY.
Yandex Leak Learnings So Far
From the data thus far, below are some of the affirmations and learnings we’ve been able to make.
There is so much data in this leak, it is very likely that we will be finding new things and making new connections in the next few weeks.
Yandex has specific factors for medical, legal, and financial topics (YMYL).
They use a form of page quality scoring, but this is known (ICS score).
Links from high authority websites have an impact on rankings.
There’s nothing new to suggest Yandex can crawl JavaScript yet outside of already publicly documented processes.
Server errors and excessive 4xx errors can impact ranking.
The time of day is taken into consideration as a ranking factor.
Below, I’ve expanded on some other affirmations and learnings from the leak.
Where possible, I’ve also tied these leaked ranking factors to the algorithm updates and announcements that relate to them, or where we were told about them being impactful.
MatrixNet
MatrixNet is mentioned in a few of the ranking factors and was announced in 2009, and was superseded in 2017 by Catboost, which was rolled out across the Yandex product-sphere.
This further adds validity to comments directly from Yandex, and one of the factor authors DenPlusPlus (Den Raskovalov) that this is in fact an outdated code repository.
Originally introduced as a new, core algorithm that took into consideration thousands of ranking factors and assigned weights based on the user location, the actual search query, and perceived search intent.
MatrixNet is typically seen as a mirror of Google’s RankBrain, or vice versa given MatrixNet was launched 6 years before RankBrain was announced.
MatrixNet has also been built upon, which isn’t surprising given it is now 14 years old.
In 2016, Yandex introduced the Palekh algorithm that used deep neural networks to better match documents (webpages) and queries, even if they didn’t contain the right “levels” of common keywords but satisfied the user intents.
Palekh was capable of processing 150 pages at a time, and in 2017 was updated with the Korolyov update, which took into account more depth of page content, and could work off 200,000 pages at once.
URL & Page Level Factors
From the leak, we have learned that Yandex takes into consideration URL construction, specifically:
The presence of numbers in the URL.
The number of trailing slashes in the URL (and if they are excessive).
The number of capital letters in the URL is a factor.
Screenshot from author, January 2023
The age of a page (document age) and the last updated date are also important, and this makes sense.
As well as document age and last update, a number of factors in the data relate to freshness – particularly for news-related queries.
Yandex formerly used timestamps, specifically not for ranking purposes but “reordering” purposes, but this is now classified as unused.
Also in the deprecated column are the use of keywords in the URL. Yandex has previously measured that three keywords from the search query in the URL would be an “optimal” result.
Internal Links & Crawl Depth
Whilst Google has gone on the record to say that for them, crawl depth isn’t explicitly a ranking factor, Yandex appears to have an active piece of code that dictates that URLs that are reachable from the homepage have a “higher” level of importance.
Screenshot from author, January 2023
This mirrors John Mueller’s 2018 statement that Google gives “a little more weight” to pages found more than one click from the homepage.
The ranking factors also highlight a specific token weighting for webpages that are “orphans” within the website linking structure.
Clicks & CTR
In 2011 Yandex released a blog post talking about how the search engine uses clicks as part of their rankings and also addresses the desires of the SEO pros to manipulate the metric for ranking gain.
Specific click factors in the leak look at things like:
The ratio of the number of clicks on the URL, relative to all clicks on the search.
The same as above, but broken down by region.
How often do users click on the URL for the search.
Manipulating Clicks
Manipulating user behavior, specifically “click-jacking” is a known tactic within Yandex.
Yandex has a filter, known as the PF filter that actively seeks out and penalizes websites that engage in this activity using scripts that monitor IP similarities and then the “user actions” of those clicks, and the impact can be significant.
The below screenshot shows the impact on organic sessions (сессии) after being penalized for imitating user clicks.
Image from Russian Search News, January 2023
User Behavior
The user behavior takeaways from the leak are some of the more interesting findings.
User behavior manipulation is a common black hat SEO tactic that Yandex has been combatting for years. At the 2020 Optimization conference, then Head of Yandex Webmaster Tools Mikhail Slevinsky said they (Yandex) are making good progress in detecting and penalizing this type of behavior.
Yandex penalizes user behavior manipulation with the same PF filter used to combat CTR manipulation.
Dwell Time
102 of the ranking factors contain the tag TG_USERFEAT_SEARCH_DWELL_TIME, and reference the device, user duration and average page dwell time.
All but 39 of these factors are deprecated.
Screenshot from author, January 2023
Bing first used the term Dwell time in a 2011 blog, and in recent years Google have made it clear that they don’t use dwell time (or similar user interaction signals) as ranking factors.
YMYL
YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) is a concept well-known within Google and is not a new concept to Yandex.
Within the data leak, there are specific ranking factors for medical, legal, and financial content that exist – but this was notably revealed in 2019 at the Yandex Webmaster conference when they announced the Proxima Search Quality Metric.
Metrika Data Usage
Six of the ranking factors relate to the usage of Metrika data for the purposes of ranking, however, one of them is tagged as deprecated.
The number of similar visitors from the YandexBar (YaBar/Ябар).
The average time spent on URLs from those same similar visitors.
The “core audience” of pages on which there is a Metrika counter [deprecated].
The average time a user spends on a host when accessed externally (from another non-search site) from a specific URL.
Average ‘depth’ (number of hits within the host) of a user’s stay on the host when accessed externally (from another non-search site) from a particular URL.
Whether or not the domain has Metrika installed.
In Metrika, user data is handled differently.
Unlike Google Analytics, there are a number of reports focused on user “loyalty” combining site engagement metrics with return frequency, duration between visits, and source of the visit.
For example, I can see a report in one click to see a breakdown of individual site visitors:
Screenshot from Metrika, January 2023
Metrika also comes “out of the box” with heatmap tools and user session recording, and in recent years the Metrika team has made good progress in being able to identify and filter bot traffic.
With Google Analytics there is an argument that Google doesn’t use UA/GA4 data for ranking purposes because of how easy it is to modify or break the tracking code, but with Metrika counters they are a lot more linear and a lot of the reports are unchangeable in terms of how the data is collected.
Impact Of Traffic On Rankings
Following on from looking at Metrika data as a ranking factor; these factors effectively confirm that direct traffic and paid traffic (buying ads via Yandex Direct) can impact organic search performance:
Share of direct visits among all incoming traffic.
Green traffic share (aka direct visits). Desktop.
Green traffic share (aka direct visits). Mobile.
Search traffic – transitions from search engines to the site.
Share of visits to the site not by links (set by hand or from bookmarks).
The number of unique visitors.
Share of traffic from search engines.
News Factors
There are a number of factors relating to “News”, including two that mention Yandex.News directly.
Yandex.News was an equivalent of Google News but was sold to the Russian social network VKontakte in August 2022, along with another Yandex product “Zen”, so it’s not clear if these factors related to a product no longer owned or operated by Yandex, or to how news websites are ranked in “regular” search.
Backlink Importance
Yandex has similar algorithms to combat link manipulation as Google, and has done since the Nepot filter in 2005.
From reviewing the backlink ranking factors and some of the specifics in the descriptions, we can assume that the best practices for building links for Yandex SEO would be to:
Build links with a more natural frequency and varying amounts.
Build links with branded anchor texts as well as use commercial keywords.
If buying links, avoid buying links from websites that have mixed topics.
Below is a list of link-related factors that can be considered affirmations of best practices:
The age of the backlink is a factor.
Link relevance based on topics.
Backlinks built from homepages carry more weight than internal pages.
Links from the top 100 websites by PR (PageRank) can impact rankings.
Link relevance based on the quality of each link.
Link relevance, taking into account the quality of each link and the topic of each link.
Link relevance, taking into account the non-commercial nature of each link.
Percentage of inbound links with query words.
Percentage of query words in links (up to a synonym).
The links contain all the words of the query (up to a synonym).
Dispersion of the number of query words in links.
However, there are some link-related factors that are additional considerations when planning, monitoring, and analyzing backlinks:
The ratio of “good” versus “bad” backlinks to a website.
The frequency of links to the site.
Number of incoming SEO trash links between hosts.
The data leak also revealed that the link spam calculator has around 80 active factors that are taken into consideration, with a number of deprecated factors.
This creates the question as to how well Yandex is able to recognize negative SEO attacks, given it looks at the ratio of good versus bad links, and how it determines what a bad link is.
A negative SEO attack is also likely to be a short burst (high frequency) link event in which a site will unwittingly gain a high number of poor quality, non-topical, and potentially over-optimized links.
Yandex uses machine learning models to identify PBNs and paid links, and they make the same assumption between link velocity and the time period they are acquired.
Typically paid-for links are generated over a longer period of time, and these patterns (including link origin site analysis) are what the Minusinsk update (2015) was introduced to combat.
Yandex Penalties
There are two ranking factors, both deprecated, named SpamKarma and Pessimization.
Pessimization refers to reducing PageRank to zero and aligns with the expectations of severe Yandex penalties.
SpamKarma also aligns with assumptions made around Yandex penalizing hosts and individuals, as well as individual domains.
Onpage Advertising
There are a number of factors relating to advertising on the page, some of them deprecated (like the screenshot example below).
Screenshot from author, January 2023
It’s not known from the description exactly what the thought process with this factor was, but it could be assumed that a high ratio of adverts to visible screen was a negative factor – much like how Google takes umbrage if adverts obfuscate the page’s main content or are obtrusive.
Tying this back to known Yandex mechanisms, the Proxima update also took into consideration the ratio of useful and advertising content on a page.
Can We Apply Any Yandex Learnings To Google?
Yandex and Google are different search engines, with a number of differences, despite the tens of engineers who have worked for both companies.
Because of this fight for talent, we can infer that some of these master builders and engineers will have built things in a similar fashion (not direct copies), and applied learnings from previous iterations of their builds with their new employers.
What Russian SEOs Are Saying About The Leak
Much like the Western World, SEO professionals in Russia have been having their say on the leak across the various Runet forums.
The reaction in these forums has been different to SEO Twitter and Mastodon, with a focus more on Yandex’s filters, and other Yandex products that are optimized as part of wider Yandex optimization campaigns.
It is also worth noting that a number of conclusions and findings from the data match what the Western SEO world are also finding.
Common themes in the Russian search forums:
Webmasters asking for insights into recent filters, such as Mimicry and the updated PF filter.
The age and relevance of some of the factors, due to author names no longer being at Yandex, and mentions of long-retired Yandex products.
The main interesting learnings are around the use of Metrika data, and information relating to the Crawler & Indexer.
A number of factors outline the usage of DSSM, which in theory was superseded by the release of Palekh in 2016. This was a search algorithm utilizing machine learning, announced by Yandex in 2016.
A debate around ICS scoring in Yandex, and whether or not Yandex may provide more traffic to a site and influence its own factors by doing so.
The leaked factors, particularly around how Yandex evaluates site quality have also come under scrutiny.
There is a long-standing sentiment in the Russian SEO community that Yandex oftentimes favors its own products and services in search results ahead of other websites, and webmasters are asking questions like:
Why do they bother going to all this trouble, when they just nail their services to the top of the page anyway?
In loosely translated documents, these are referred to as the Sorcerers or Yandex Sorcerers. In Google, we’d call these SERP (search engine results pages) features – like Google Hotels, etc
In October 2022, Kassir (a Russian ticket portal) claimed ₽328m compensation from Yandex due to lost revenue, caused by the “discriminatory conditions” in which Yandex Sorcerers took the customer base away from the private company.
This is off the back of a 2020 class action in which multiple companies raised a case with the FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) for anticompetitive promotion of their own services.
In a fast-paced industry like SEO, a lot can happen over the course of a year – which is why you want to make sure you stay ahead of the curve.
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This year’s SEO experts are:
Azeem Ahmad, digital marketing lead at Azeem Digital.
Rebecca Berbel, product marketing manager at Oncrawl.
Jeff Coyle, co-founder & chief strategy officer at MarketMuse.
Renee Girard, associate director, SEO at Crate & Barrel Holdings.
Chris Haines, senior SEO specialist at Ahrefs.
Joshua Hardwick, head of content at Ahrefs.
Jeannie Hill, digital marketing consultant & SEO at Hill Web Creations.
Kevin Indig, growth advisor.
Russ Jeffery, director of ecosystem and product strategy at Duda.
Jeremy Knauff, CEO at Spartan Media.
Olesia Korobka, SEO entrepreneur at Fajela.com.
Christina LeVasseur, SEO consultant at MediaSesh.
Ludwig Makhyan, co-founder of Mazeless Enterprise SEO.
Jesse McDonald, global SEO strategist and optimization lead at IBM.
Joel Mesherghi, senior SEO consultant at Builtvisible.
Helen Pollitt, head of SEO at Car & Classic.
Adam Riemer, president at Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC.
Eli Schwartz, author of “Product-Led SEO”.
Andrew Shotland, CEO & founder of Local SEO Guide.
Aleyda Solis, international SEO consultant & founder of Orainti.
Patrick Stox, product advisor, technical SEO & brand ambassador at Ahrefs.
Mark Traphagen, VP of product marketing & training at seoClarity.
This post was sponsored by Trisolute News Dashboard. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Wondering why some of your articles’ visibility seemed to suddenly dip this year?
Could this be part of a larger trend?
On August 25, 2022, Google started rolling out an update that could be quite interesting for news publishers and their visibility. On September 12, they rolled out yet another core update.
These core updates were named “Helpful Content Update(s)”.
Today, we’ll be showing you how news publishers around the world were impacted by them.
What Is The Helpful Content Update?
Google’s Helpful Content Update is an algorithm update that focuses on:
Weeding out content that is written for the sole purpose of getting a good ranking.
Deprioritizing articles that don’t contain any informational or helpful content for the reader.
Rewarding content that is helpful to readers.
Google frequently updates its algorithm in order to better match content to searchers, and sometimes, publishers’ visibility is heavily impacted.
Which Google Categories Has The Helpful Content Update Impacted?
In this article, we’ll be showcasing which publishers around the world were impacted by the Helpful Content Update.
We examined each of Google’s categories to see whether we would find something extraordinary around the time the updates were executed and picked out one or two countries per category where the changes were especially obvious.
How We Discovered The Impact Of The Helpful Content Update
We wanted to make sure to look at the most visible publishers for the generally freshest, most newsworthy keywords based on Google News and Trends to get the most impactful results for the publisher landscape.
All rankings are based on a near real-time 15-minute crawling interval, so, we used the following filter settings on the KPI Dashboard → Mobile News Box:
Date Range: July 25, 2022 – September 25, 2022 (Week 30 – Week 38).
Top 10 Competitors.
All Ranking Types.
General Keyword Set.
With those filter settings, we took a look at different countries from all over the world individually.
Let’s have a look:
Top Stories
Mexico
Here, we can observe that the two publishers, El Financiero and Infobae, have obviously been affected by the updates:
While El Financiero showed a rise in its visibility following the August update, Infobae dropped in visibility afterward.
After the September update, El Financiero then showed a visible drop as well.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The two vertical dashed lines mark the two updates respectively.
The Verdict:
Publishers seem to have been affected slightly more by the August update than by the September update, both positively and negatively.
Country-Specific News
Switzerland
20 Minutes and Blick both rose in visibility after the August update.
Then, in week 36 (September 5 – September 11), 20 Minutes had its peak in visibility, while Blick had already started to drop.
From week 36 to week 37, the week when the second update happened, both publishers displayed an extreme drop.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
While publishers seemed to have benefitted from the August update in this category, the September update led to a drop in their visibility.
World News
Colombia
For Columbia, there was an increase in visibility after the August update, especially for El Tiempo and Semana, while the visibility of El Espectador nearly stagnated.
However, the visibility dropped for all three publishers before the September update and remained at an almost constant level after it.
Only El Espectador was able to regain visibility after the second update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
Both updates have caused a lot of turbulence in visibility for publishers.
Business News
Peru
Here, we can observe that between the two updates, CNN saw losses in visibility, but these evened out again towards the September update.
RPP was also able to build up visibility at first, but lost it leading up to and after the September update.
For El Comercio, there was a short-term upswing after the August update, but it flattened out again.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
The first update seems to have had a stronger and more negative effect on publishers in Peru than the second one.
Science & Technology News
France
In the Science & Technology category, publishers in France have largely been able to maintain or even build their visibility after the August update.
However, both Jeuxvideo and Gamekult lost visibility after the September update – only Le Monde increased its visibility after both updates.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
For most of the French publishers, the two Google updates in the Science & Technology category resulted in a loss in visibility.
Entertainment News
Australia
In the Australian Entertainment category, News.com.au’s visibility increased leading up to the August update, only to then show an extreme drop that lasted until the week of the September update.
This led to the visibility curve flattening again.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
The first update in August seems to have had a significantly negative impact on Australian publishers in the Entertainment category, while the second update in September had a more positive impact.
United Kingdom
For publishers in the U.K., the two updates showed significant influences on visibility, as can be seen below for the Daily Mail and the Mirror.
Both publishers showed an increase in their visibility leading up to Week 34.
Then, when the August update took place, both of their visibilities dropped significantly.
For the Daily Mail, the graph drops continuously, even through the September update, but for the Mirror, this second update made them drop even more in terms of visibility.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
Here, the first update in August had a significant effect on the publishers’ visibility; the second one only had a moderate effect.
Sports News
Canada
In the Canadian Sports category, TSN held visibility during the August update, but lost it slightly in the week before and during the September update. However, they gained it back after the update.
CBC’s visibility, on the other hand, went the other way: Before the August update, their visibility increased significantly, and then dropped off slightly at the time of the September update and in the following week.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
The August update had a larger impact on publishers’ visibility in the Sports category, for some immediately at the time of the update, and for others in the following weeks.
Health News
Austria
In the Health category, Austrian publishers Der Standard and ORF were able to significantly increase visibility after the August update and also brought this increase through the September update with slight fluctuations.
In contrast, both Kurier and Vienna.at lost visibility after the August update, but were also able to make up for this after the September update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
For publishers in Austria, the August update seems to have had the largest impact on their visibility in the Health category, with it being negative for some publishers and positive for others.
United States
In the U.S. Health category, the progressions seem to have been identical between NPR and The New York Times, because initially, both lost visibility after the August update.
However, NPR continued to lose visibility until the September update and after that, their visibility increased slightly again.
For The New York Times, on the other hand, things got a bit more turbulent: First, they regained visibility between the two updates, only to lose it significantly in the week of the September update, and regain it in the week after the update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
The August update seems to have had a negative impact on the publishers’ visibility in the Health category, while the second update in September had a positive effect.
COVID-19 News
Brazil
In the COVID-19 category in Brazil, the three publishers Globo, Abril, and UOL showed little to no changes in their visibility in the week of the August update.
In week 36 though, which marks the week immediately before the September update, both Abril and Globo dropped in their visibility, while UOL rose.
For Globo, this drop continued throughout the September update as UOL continued to rise; only Abril was able to catch itself again and flatten the curve.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
Brazil’s top publishers seem to have been significantly more impacted by the September update than by the August update.
Germany
In the German COVID-19 category, DER SPIEGEL particularly gained visibility in the week leading up to the August update and then slowly lost it again throughout it.
Through the September update, the trend for DER SPIEGEL then went up again.
The picture is different for Die Zeit: Here, the publisher lost visibility in the week before the August update and regained it throughout. They were also able to maintain this visibility with slight reductions in the time between the updates.
However, they then lost visibility dramatically through the September update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The Verdict:
Here, both updates seem to have had an impact on visibility simultaneously.
Key Findings For How Google’s Helpful Content Update Affected Publishers
For top publishers in most countries, the first Helpful Content Update in August seems to have had a more significant impact on their visibility than the second one in September. It cannot be clearly said that publishers’ visibility was only negatively impacted by the updates, since some clearly benefitted from them.
Here are some other interesting takeaways we noticed:
Publishers from Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Germany showed noticeable changes in visibility around the updates in all of Google’s categories.
The Country-Specific News category was the only category where publishers from all countries showed anomalies in some way.
In the Business News category, Brazil was the only country that showed no noticeable changes in top publishers’ visibility.
The categories Country-Specific News, Business News, Science & Technology News, Entertainment News, and Health News were most affected by the update.
The BBC was affected by the top 10 rankings of the World category in four countries (Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Peru) and was therefore the most affected publisher in this analysis.
Want to learn more about your visibility in Google News? Schedule a free demo.
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Image by SEOmonitor, November 2022
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Image by SEOmonitor, November 2022
Framework 3: Better Integrate Media Efforts To Adopt A Unified Approach To Global Search
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Framework 4: Grow & Benchmark All Target Markets Toward A Common Objective By Developing Search Maturity Roadmaps
Search maturity roadmaps across markets allow you to evaluate:
How performance differs from one target market to another.
The current maturity level of each market when it comes to critical aspects of SEO performance such as content, technical, reporting, paid integration, and automation.
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Image by SEOmonitor, November 2022
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When you run a business globally, your website is one of the most powerful tools to reach and communicate with your target audience.
If you are conducting business offline in various countries, you already know how different the audience is from country to country.
Each country also has different business-related policies and rules. With a website, you also need to consider these and online regulations.
From an international SEO viewpoint, there are some critical aspects that the site owners must always keep in mind, including geotargeting, different search engines, and differences between each local audience.
There are additional factors to consider when deciding to have a global site or separate local sites – a place for each targeting country or language – including maintenance costs and the availability of local teams to maintain the sites.
In this article, I will explain four areas that greatly determine whether a global or local site is better for you.
Data & Privacy-Related Laws & Regulations
It is impossible to list all laws and regulations to do business in different countries around the globe. But two of the most important sets of laws and regulations for website owners to pay attention to are:
As mentioned above, each region, country, or state can set its own, and it can be a broad policy, guidance, law, or any other type of regulation.
Some are applied to all websites, while others are applied to websites for specific scopes, such as government and public sectors.
In the European Union (EU)
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is probably the most talked about privacy and data protection regulation.
It regulates the processing by an individual, a company, or an organization of personal data relating to individuals in the EU.
In California
The State of California has passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and many companies expect other states to follow suit and enact similar privacy laws shortly.
Some sites have already responded by showing the cookie consent message to everyone regardless of the access location.
In Japan
The Act on the Protection of Personal Information was first set up in 2005 in Japan, drastically amended in 2016, and has been in full force since 2017. It mandates Japanese websites to post a privacy policy and other requirements.
Ecommerce sites must also post the information specified in the Commercial Transactions Law.
Even if the website is managed in the U.S., your Japanese website must meet these regulations, especially if you have a physical presence in Japan.
Apple Inc. U.S. Website Footer
Apple Inc. U.K. Website Footer
Apple Inc. Japanese Website Footer
Screenshot of Apple Inc. Chinese Website Footer, September 2022
The above images are from the footer on Apple’s websites in the U.S., U.K., Japan, and China.
In addition to a standard privacy policy, the U.K. site has a page about using cookies about GDPR.
The Chinese website indicates the website registration number below the footer links as required by Chinese regulations.
Accessibility-Related Laws & Regulations
Last month, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) made headlines when a federal lawsuit against Taco Bell was filed. While it was against the restaurant, this got many website owners’ attention.
Currently, there are IT accessibility laws and policies for U.S. federal agencies and several guidelines and standards to be considered in general, including the Information and Communication Technology Standards and Guidelines.
ADA applies to both public and private sectors, including websites. In terms of website accessibility, many points will improve overall user experiences for not just people with disabilities but all website users.
For many countries and regions, including Canada, China, the EU, Japan, and the U.K., accessibility to web content is often a mandatory policy.
Like the data and privacy laws and regulations, each country has different requirements for accessibility.
It’s a growing task for website owners to keep up with these rapidly changing requirements, especially for global site owners. Failure to adhere to them can be costly financially and negatively impact brand image.
Local Trends & Competitors
I work closely with websites targeting the Asian market, so I can usually tell if the site is a local company site or a global company’s local site from the design and content.
The difference is not caused by the design skill but by how much they understand the local market and the target audience.
The easiest way to show this difference is to compare the website’s design. The layout, color scheme, and images are also other telltale signs of where the site was created.
For eCommerce sites, how people expect to pay for the orders differs from country to country. The exchange and return policy are another difference among countries.
While these differences don’t impact the entire site, they can cause customers to abandon the shopping cart.
The differences in the local interests are reflected in website content, too. Often, global sites’ content is determined by the HQ country, while local competitor websites have content designed to satisfy the specific interests of the local audiences.
The inability to satisfy the local searcher’s intent can cause a considerable business opportunity loss to the global website.
As Google improves the algorithms to present the best content for each searcher, poorly localized content that is not particularly written for local audiences won’t be competitive in the search results.
Screenshot from Google U.S. search results for [mug cup], September 2022
Screenshot from Google Japan search results for [mug cup], September 2022
(Product images reflecting the local interests: U.S. and Japan “mug cup” Google search results)
One Global Website vs. Multiple Local Websites
If you have global sites under one domain using the same webpage templates for all country websites, create a list of must-meet regulation points from all concerned countries, and implement them regardless of the target country.
While it seems like an enormous task, if you have a smaller team or don’t have a team in each country, this is the best option for you to cover all bases.
In this case, having someone responsible for reviewing and keeping up with laws and regulations would be helpful as these are updated from time to time.
You may want to consider creating a separate website for each target country if you have:
A good number of team members in each local country manage the website.
Enough budget to support it.
Even if you separate the sites by regions with similar laws and regulations or user and cultural trends, it would give you more flexibility, be better compliant, and be appropriately designed for local audiences.
For example, instead of setting up multiple country and language sites within the EU under one domain set up for the EU market, it is probably easier to manage the website design and content for a specific audience in each country in the EU.
Central and South American countries may be another target market that works with one domain with multiple country sites.
Considering the multiple characteristics of the Chinese market – from Baidu’s capability and algorithms to connection speed, website registration policy, and cybersecurity law (a.k.a. “Great Firewall of China”), it may make sense to create a separate Chinese website for many companies that consider China as one of their important markets.
When you have a particular website, you can host it in the country to help improve the download speed.
It is easier to obtain ccTLD with the website registered with the Chinese government and provide the content designed specifically for the Chinese audience.
Final Thoughts
Having a separate website for each target country offers many more options and the flexibility to comply with local laws and policies and reflect local interests in the content and website design.
These are also great for geotargeting in SEO, which is one of the biggest concerns for many global website owners. However, it comes with an increased overhead cost.
It is not impossible to meet the local laws and policies with one global domain website.
As Apple and other global corporations do, you can provide unique local content even with different website designs.
Using the same domain doesn’t mean having the same design or using the same CMS. It is possible to have the localized content on the same CMS and add local-only unique content using a different CMS on the same domain site.
When deploying global or local sites, meeting local regulations and accommodating local audiences’ interests are essential.
Once you set up websites, track the performance data from each local site and content and make adjustments as needed.
Suppose the data indicates that having a global site limits the business potential due to different local interests and requirements or that having local sites is too costly. In that case, you need to reconsider the options.
