How to handle both US and UK spelling

[MathsIsFun]

Time and again I run into spelling/cultural problems. The most serious for me is "Math" (US) vs "Maths" (UK). But there is also "meter" vs "metre", "multiplication table" vs "times table", and even school years are called "Grade" vs "Year".

It's a mess, and I want to clean it up. How should I do this? And how do I avoid running full tilt into Googles "duplicate content" problems?

(Hey, If it was English vs Spanish I could just have it all translated, and no duplicate content. But it is English vs English.)

What should I do?

[cbp]

I hide the alternative spelling in places no one reads - eg the copyright notice.

CBP

[coder]

a simple solution is to create a subdomain and then place a no follow tag so you don't get penalized for duplicate content.

[28overpar]

Do you actually get punished for duplicate content?
I was involved with a thread last week to do with companies who have a "white label" product of their website. It was suggested that if a spider comes across duplicate content, it will just ignore the more recent files/site?

If this is the case, would the "nofollow" method be needed?

[MathsIsFun]

Well, in all reasonableness, I should be able to have two versions of my website, one US and one UK. This would serve the users best, I feel.

But if that means that both will be penalised, then - no way!

But does anybody actually know what this "duplicate content" penalty is really like? There must be someone who has country-targetted websites that do ok.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by Phantom

a simple solution is to create a subdomain and then place a no follow tag so you don't get penalized for duplicate content.

Yeah, but if you don't let the search engines in, they won't find the alternative spellings, so what's the point?

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by MathsIsFun

But does anybody actually know what this "duplicate content" penalty is really like?

I only know what my experience was like.

I had a little hobby site, and it wasn't my highest priority - so when I moved it to a new domain, I left the old site up, but pointed all the navigation to my new site.

For a year or more it worked great - all my old incoming links still worked, so I kept all my traffic, and both sites were listed in Google. Then suddenly the newer domain dropped out of Google completely. The old domain was still showing up in searches exactly as before - no penalty. This was the case for over a year.

I finally removed all the duplicate content two weeks ago, and my new site is now showing up in Google.

[Duncan Pollock]

The absolute rule in publishing/writing when it comes to spelling differences is consistency. It doesn't matter a jot whether you use colour or color as long as you stick to the same version from start to finish.
I'm sure the spiders have the same attitude. For example, I can't see them refusing to include "Using colour to make a room look smaller or bigger" in the SERPS if a searcher asks "What color of walls will make a room seem smaller?"

Attempting to duplicate content by using a UK page and a US one is surely a lot of needless work, whether it leads to the spiders choosing only one of them or not.

Duncan

[MathsIsFun]

Now, cspelts, that is most interesting !

Perhaps this "duplicate content" penalty is just Google deciding which site to list. So there is no real penalty if you own both sites.

I have heard before that both sites would be penalized, but maybe not.

And I agree, Duncan, consistency is important. And it is best, of course, to have pages that match user's spelling and naming conventions. If someone searches for "grade 6 algebra" they would find my US page with US spelling etc, but "year 6 algebra" would hopefully find the UK site (all things being equal!)

[Conficio]

Hi there,
first I think twice the content is not what gets penalized in Google. What they go after is many times the very same content. And with the different spelling the content is not really the same, is it?

However, there is an excellent and efficient solution for you issue in the HTTP protocol. It is called Content Negotiation. You set up both versions of every page and let the user decide, if he/she prefers British or American English (or Australian for that matter). These features can be configured in any modern browser, where you define your language preference(s). This information is sent to the server and can be interpreted there, so that the server responds with the preferred variant of the page.

I don't know which language preferences the search engines sent. However, I would suspect, that they have both, an American crawler and a UK crawler. If you want to be sure, I'd set up two domains, that also serve the language versions, for example example.com, example.us and example.com.uk. This can be all done under one single apache (may be several virtual servers), that is configured right.

The benefits are that most visitors will see the language they prefer (unless they did configure their browser wrong) and the search engines (and anybody linking to you) will pick up the right version. I'd think that Goggle does list mainly the British version in the UK index and the American version in the US index. So people get both results as appropriate.

Hope this helps.

K<o>

[jawn_tech]

There is no dup penalty (that I've ever heard of), only a dup filter that doesn't list duplicates.

Rest easy and be well.

;)

[dominoman]

Originally Posted by Duncan Pollock

The absolute rule in publishing/writing when it comes to spelling differences is consistency. It doesn't matter a jot whether you use colour or color as long as you stick to the same version from start to finish.

I would disagree that it doesn't matter. You need to write according to who your target audience is. I find nothing worse than going to a site and seeing favorites (instead of favourites), Monday through Friday (instead of Monday to Friday), center (instead of centre) etc. Aaaargh! I'm sure Americans get just as annoyed by the inverse

I would definately recommend two versions of the page if you really need to target US and international audiences.

As far as I know there is no duplicate penalty - if Google sees duplicate content the worst they will do is not to index the version with the lowest PR.

[Creatix]

I am a languages student and a web designer. My sites have a very multinational audience, with many visitors coming from the USA and UK, and countries like Germany and the like also.

I also happen to live in Switzerland and I speak German which helps me to understand the difficulties people can have deciding what English to use. Why? Because every student of Englsih has to make the same decision.
Bad news for Americans, the Cambridge system for learning English is much more recognised than any other, and so for this reason the majority of English learners world-wide learn British English.
Perhaps this is fitting since it is as close as English gets to being real English.

My advice therefore, definitely go with one version and use international English. Yes, that means using British spellings and terminology, but it also means discovering what the masses will understand.
Will an American student understand the term "the 7th year of school"? I though so, great, problem solved.
Math versus Maths? No problem, you just achieved the keywords maths and math in one word!

If you cater to an international audience and think out side the square of American versus Briths Audience you will not only be welcoming the millions of potential visitors from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, Canada and the USA, but also millions more that can read and undertstand Cambridge English in 100's of other countries on earth.

It is a big world out there... take all the visitors you can get. Don't limit yourself, but don't dulicate the content... even if the spiders accept it, I would think it was cheap and tacky... and would probably just leave, but not via a PPC ad.

[budneyc]

We are located in Canada where international English and the metric system are used, however, our USA neighbors seem to do everything their own way.

Since the US is such a good trading partner with Canada and we sell so much to the US, we have to cater to them. Most Americans would simply hit the back button if they came to our site and everything was in kilograms instead of pounds or Canadian dollars instead of US dollars. IMO, US consumers simply have too many options to purchase within their own country and they will not bother trying to figure out our spellings, weights etc. For these reasons and the fact some of our products differ because of electrical codes etc, we have our US site as a .com and our Canadian site at .ca.

I have always been concerned about being penalized for duplicate content, so we do not allow search engines to spider our .ca site. Our plan was to some day make our .ca site different before allowing it to be indexed.

So my point is, there are a lot of reasons why country targeted sites are beneficial. Any opinions on how different they need to be to both get listed in the engines and not get penalized would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Clayton

[Duncan Pollock]

I agree, it is important to write for your audience. If it's primarily US, then color it ought to be. If it's UK, then make it colour. And if you're in Canada or Australia, take your choice, basing it on your judgement as to where the majority of your visitors will come from. (And, ahem, notice the UK spelling of the US word judgment -- an e after g before a consonant!)
But still abide by the consistency rule.

Duncan
PS. To revive an old chestnut: England and America are, as Winston Churchill observed, two countries separated by the same language.

[Conficio]

Hi there,
just to repeat my self. You can easily offer multiple language versions to your users and potentially to the search engines.

Just offer en-US and en-UK and en as supported languages of your documents. W3C allows even to define the other alternatives of each page in <meta> tags.

Read this article to learn more about how to set up Apache for language negotiation and some tips how to add the requested language into your log file or how search engines treat the language in their requests. Be careful, the article talks of AltaVista and AllTheWeb as alternatives to Google, so I suspect it is pre 2002. However, it should be still correct in most points.

K<o>

[Faglork]

What an interesting thread. This type of information makes this forum so valuable.

I studied American and English Literature, and over the years it became sort of mixed up - I guess I write US English with an occasional BE "accent". I shamelessly use this forum to keep my somewhat "rusty" English going ;-)

I am about to do some website translations, mostly hotel sites. I do not believe I can convince my customers to pay for "two english versions".

What puzzles me is that this seems to be a real problem - I always thought that sticking to US English would have no negative consequences for an "international" audience, since BE / Comonwealth visitors would recognize the "dialect". Since the differences are not very grave, I thought that BE visitors would at least not be offended. After all, when I read an Austrian or Swiss website, I just smile at the differences - but I can perfectly understand the content, as long as it doesn't get too specific. Creatix may confirm that.

Please tell me: How do non-US-resident visitors react to a page in US English? And vice versa?
Is this *really* such a big problem?

Would you support Duncan's view that it does not matter as long as it is consistent or would you support Creatix's suggestion to stick to BE English for its better "reach"?

Alex

[cspelts]

I have an interesting antidote - I inadvertently bought a domain name that is two words in America, but in Europe it’s one word – and it’s been fun to see how much traffic I get from Europe because of that fact! It wasn’t something I expected so it’s been a nice added bonus.

As an American I can honestly say that most of the time I could care less if you spell it color or colour – but I do notice. If you have the information I’m looking for, who cares where you’re located?

But there is an exception. When I’m looking to buy something, unless it’s a very specialized item, I’d rather not deal with international shipping, so I wouldn’t stick around if you describe a dress are red in colour. Like someone else mentioned, there are too many other local choices.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by faglork

Would you support Duncan's view that it does not matter as long as it is consistent or would you support Creatix's suggestion to stick to BE English for its better "reach"?

I would support the idea that as long as it's consistent it's fine - and I would seriously question the idea that you would have better "reach" with BE English.

[MathsIsFun]

Wow! This has turned into such a rich topic of conversation. (I am honored/honoured)

- I have looked into Conficio's suggestion to use Apache, and apparently if Apache is configured right you can just change any page you want into (for example): sample.html.en-us, sample.html.en-gb and sample.html.html, and any request for sample.html will return the right one based on the browser's preferred language, and no need to change links! One problem: how would Google see this? Serving different pages etc? Good or bad for robots?

- I am encouraged by both cspelts and jawn_tech to ignore the so called "duplicate content penalty", as at worst Google would choose which of the two sites to show in the result, not penalize both

- So, maybe it is best to have two separate websites, with each one "culturally pure". Once achieved it is just one extra step for any new content to be "purified" for each site. But what would I do about links? Cross-link them? Would I not be diluting PR, and have both sites drop away. I would hate to work hard for months just to see visits dry up.

[Ariana]

I had posted a thread similar to this about having a wholesale & retail site and duplicate content filter http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=36835 and have read this thread with interest.

I'm wondering if the equation changes if you were to cross link your two sites together? For example say someone from UK searched and got your US site, would you have somewhere on every page where it would say "click here for US version"? In my situation I can easily envision a retail customer getting to the wholesale page by accident or vice versa, so I would want the cross links on almost every page to give the user the opportunity to get to the right site.. but then you're crosslinking a site hosted on the Same IP Block.. which is not recommended.

In summary I guess I'm just wondering if anyone's opinion of the dup content issue in your case would change if you throw cross linking into the mix...