Google Says Using Google Translate Can Be Against Google's Webmast

[Guest Used Cars]

I spotted an interesting comment from Google's JohnMu at the Google Webmaster Help forums. John said that in some cases, using Google Translate to auto-translate content for your web site might be seen as "creating auto-generated content, which would be against our Webmaster Guidelines."

I believe this is the first time I have seen a Googler say this, at least in response to using Google Translate to translate your content. Maybe John is saying this is a no-no when it comes to taking other people's content, running Google Translate on it and publishing it on your own site. I am not sure if he makes a distinction here. Let me quote JohnMu fully:

I just want to add a word of warning here -- using automated translation tools to directly create content for your site could be seen as creating auto-generated content, which would be against our Webmaster Guidelines. Instead of just taking the output of a program like Google Translate, I'd strongly recommend at least having it corrected before putting it online. While Googlebot may initially fall for some Spanish keywords in your text, your users are not going to appreciate content that has been automatically translated and published without a review. I love Google Translate, but if you publish the results and get them indexed without having them reviewed, you're not showing a lot of respect to your users...

You see, I am not sure if John is making a distinction between using it to translate content you wrote or not. It seems the point John is making here is that when you translate content using Google Translate, you must have someone manually look it over or else Google can penalize your site somehow because it is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

John is saying that using Google Translate, without manual intervention of some sorts (maybe even on your own unique content), is the same as creating auto-generated content, which is not in accordance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Source : http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022816.html

[Robsta]

It doesn't make sense that their own tool is against their own guidelines.

[Homar]

I think this is rather reasonable. Including a translate tool on your website is not against the guidelines. Automated translation and insertion of content (without editing) into your CMS, blog or store is. But why would you want to do this anyway? If you (or one of your staff) does not speak the language, how are you going to be able to support or communicate with your global customer base? Google don't want sites with pretty useless automated translations outperforming their native (well written) counterparts.

[bsmither]

I read this as Google, and using the included argument as a reasonable rationale to clarify their rules, is issuing a friendly warning against the following scenario. The tool is not in question, just the sequence of steps one takes in using it.

The warning:

pageOfDynamicContent.php has code that pulls user-supplied content from a database - a community bulletin board, for example.

The script sends that data chunk via cURL (or some other technology) to Google Translate, based on the IP-to-Country subroutine, in some fashion.

The script catches the returned data chunk (the translation).

The script then formulates a web page, deciding which data chunk to use based on the IP-to-Country subroutine.

As opposed to:

pageOfStaticContent.php has code that pulls admin-supplied, pre-established variants of text for a data block from a language database.

The text, having been obtained from Google Translate previously by manual methods, then tweaked by a group of volunteers to proofread the raw translation.

Or, as is much more common (happens to one of my other sites frequently because I have such a button), a visitor will click a "Translate this page" button which, from the visitor's browser, sends my page's URL to the translator and the translator delivers back to that person the translation.

@Homar: This other site of mine is for the United States population, but the professional subject matter it delivers had culturally originated from China. But I don't speak Chinese. The information, regardless of what language it is viewed in, is still important for me to have made available. The information is not designed to incite a conversation or debate.

[Homar]

@Homar: This other site of mine is for the United States population, but the professional subject matter it delivers had culturally originated from China. But I don't speak Chinese. The information, regardless of what language it is viewed in, is still important for me to have made available. The information is not designed to incite a conversation or debate.

I should clarify that I was speaking in the context of an online/ecommerce store when asking "why you would want to do this?". Speaking generally, the key is to interpret and amend as necessary that provided by any translation service - or exactly as you put it "tweaked by a group of volunteers to proofread the raw translation". I don't think that any issue is made regarding the use of a Google translate widget.