Google recently announced this expanded translated results Switched to additional languages in the search results, which was great to see. Also, it’s important to understand that the data is available in Google Search Console performance reports (and with some additional benefits, available via the API). I will explain more about this soon.
But as I’ve spoken to site owners and SEOs, I’ve found that there’s a lot of confusion about what translated results are, how they appear in the SERPs, and how the data is displayed. In addition, many people do not know that this data can be viewed by countrywhich can be very helpful when determining the language and country combinations when triggering translated results.
Note that until this expansion you often saw India and Indonesia strong in the country data because Google did not comprehensively translate search results for many languages. But with the additional languages that Google has announced, more and more countries are appearing in the GSC data. Based on this extension and the data available to site owners, I decided to write this post explaining how to find, export, and analyze translated data available in Search Console.
In this post, I’ll first explain how translated results work and how they appear in the SERPs. I’ll then walk you through bulk exporting the results by country via the GSC API using Analytics Edge (which works in both Excel and Google Sheets, as well as on PC and Mac). Let’s get in.
What translated results look like and how it works.
First, Google can automatically translate the title link and snippet in search results if it determines that it is helpful to users. When this happens it will look like the screenshots below. The title link and snippet are translated with a small message below the result explaining what happened. There is also a small Google Translate icon.
But the translation doesn’t stop there. When you click through the entry to a website, the page is also translated via Chrome. The Google Translate menu appears at the top of the page so you can change the settings if necessary.
Understanding the languages that Google automatically translates can help website owners and SEOs determine which languages they want to translate their content into for users. For example, you may want to have someone fluent in the local language translate your content and then use hreflang to tell Google the language and country combinations (to swap out the correct content by language and country in search results).
As Google explains in his documentation About translated results can translate results in Arabic, Bengali, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. And that’s on both desktop and mobile devices.
A quick note about disabling translated results:
Website owners can opt out of Google translating their content in search results by using the meta robots tag with “notranslate” or the x-robots tag with the same rule. And you can isolate Googlebot if necessary. But please be aware that this will opt you out ALL Translation functions in Google search. So it’s a big hammer. Be careful.
To find search query and country combinations:
First, you can find the queries that trigger translated results by going to GSC’s performance reports, clicking the Search Appearance tab, and then filtering by translated results. But that only covers up to a thousand rows and you have to filter twice in the GSC UI to see the country. For example, first filter for translated results, then click the Countries tab and filter for a specific country. You can then view the translated results by query and country (but only for the specific country you filtered for). The GSC UI does not allow you to easily display query and country together for all translated results.
Of course, it would be very helpful to be able to export ALL of your data (which I’ve covered many times in the past in my tutorials on using Analytics Edge to bulk export GSC data). And beyond that: see Query by country would be very helpful for testing what search results look like when Google translates content and how your pages look when users click on your website. This data can also help you develop an Hreflang strategy if you go down the route of translating the content yourself (having the content translated by people who are fluent in a local language).
To summarize: GSC UI doesn’t return more than a thousand results and you have to filter twice to get query and country. But there is good news. The API provides the country and allows you to export all your GSC data! So when you export the full results via the API, all queries that triggered translated results will be provided, along with the country the user was in when this happened. Again, this can help you on multiple levels, including developing a strong hreflang strategy if necessary.
How to bulk export translated results by country using Analytics Edge
The great thing about creating tutorials over the years is that you can use these older tutorials to expand functionality later. In 2019, I wrote a post explaining how to export GSC data to Search Appearance. For example, export data by review snippets, merchant listings, FAQs, and more. Well, you can also use this approach to export translated results.
This means you can simply follow this tutorial and use the search rendering code for translated results when exporting the data via the API. You also need to add the Country dimension in the Fields tab to ensure that you get both the query and the country when you export your data. Don’t worry, it’s very easy.
When choosing dimensions, first make sure you add both the query and the country:
And if you add filters, you should use them TRANSLATED_RESULT as code for the search display. This code needs to be exactly what I listed above, with the words separated by an underscore.
Then follow the rest of the instructions in this tutorial to export GSC data via the API. At the end you get search query, country and then clicks, impressions, CTR and position.
Final tips and recommendations:
- My first recommendation is Google! It would be helpful to specify the recognized language in the export instead of just the country. I’m not sure how easy this is for the GSC team to add, but that would be great since Google now supports more languages for translated results.
- As a website owner, review the exported data and find frequently translated content by query and country. These could be good candidates for your own translation efforts. For example, have someone fluent in the local language translate this content for you. And then publish that content and with hreflang to signal Google the combination of language and country. Then let Google do it by showing the correct language version of your content when users search in certain languages and from certain countries.
- I also recommend exporting the results and actually checking the SERPs to see what this looks like for your own content. Strange things may happen during translation in search results or when someone visits the translated page from the SERPs. It also makes sense to review the user experience when this happens.
- And as I mentioned earlier, site owners who don’t want Google to translate their content in search results can use the meta robots tag with “notranslate” to reject translated results. You can also use nottranslate over the x-robots tag to achieve the same result. However, please note that by using notranslate you are opting out of this ALL Translation functions in Google search. Like I said, it’s a big hammer, so be careful.
Summary: Learn when your snippets and content are being translated by Google.
Now that Google has expanded the number of supported languages for providing translated results, it makes sense for website owners to analyze the data to ensure they are fully informed about how users experience their content in the SERPs. And with the help of the GSC API and Analytics Edge, site owners and SEOs can export translated results in bulk, including search query and country. As I explained in my post, this data can help website owners develop a strategy for potentially translating their own content. I highly recommend exporting your own data today. You might be surprised at what you find.
GG