Which Directories are You Relying on?

Cindy King — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:07:08 +0000

Below you will find explicit how-to instructions to submit your website to several foreign search engines.

If you have a country that you would like included in this tutorial, leave a comment requesting your country at http://cindyking.biz/web-lingo-getting-on-foreign-search-engines/ language or search engine of preference and it will be included.

Internet User demographics are changing. Most North American companies rely on being referenced by Google. Let’s take a closer look below at how well Google searches fare in two of the world’s largest markets.Remember if Google is not penetrating well into a foreign market, then your website will not be found in that market.In China, Google has a 27% market share; but the local language search engine Baidu has a full 55%.Similarly, in Russia, Google is in a distant third place, with Yandex the leader and another Russian player – Rambler – holding second.

Google holds only a 17% market share in Russia – behind the two Russian Language sites that control nearly 75% of that market. In addition to the 140 million Russians, there are an additional 145 million people that speak Russian worldwide.

More than 50% of growth in internet users from 2007-2010 is likely to come from China, Russia and India which are behind western Europe and North America – please note that these countries have more than 40% of the worlds population. It is probably time to find out how to get your site listed on these search engines.

Turning Point:

Chinese and Russian Population & Internet Numbers:

215 million Americans have internet access at present. There are 162 million internet users in China and 60 million more from India. A number that equals all of the users in the United States as in China and India combined – BUT there are more than 2 billion other Chinese and Indians that are not yet on the internet.

China is the world’s most populated country, nearly 1.4 Billion people. Russia has the largest population in Europe, larger than Germany and France combined. Russia and China each have one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Internet penetration in Russia currently stands at about 20% – half the European average and less than a third of the 69.9% in the United States. In China, penetration is just 10.9% (so there are a BILLION future clients that are not on the internet yet).

When China gets to the worldwide average for internet penetration of 20% they will have passed the number of American internet users and when they hit the European average they will have more uses than Europe and North America combined.

The penetration levels in Western Europe and North America appear to have stabilized and look unlikely to grow significantly in the future. As an example, Internet penetration is 55% and 65% of the French and German populations.

The majority of new world-wide internet users will come from China and India, since their present internet penetration is only 12.5% and 5% respectively. The bulk of new European users will be from Russia, the Ukraine and Turkey. It is estimated that in less then 2 years China will pass the United States as the biggest internet community online.

Is Google up to the Challenge?

Time for an interesting question; have Google and Microsoft reached their Search Engine plateau about to begin the decline in worldwide search engine importance? I exclude Yahoo! since word on the street has been that Microsoft will acquire them and Yahoo! has been on a decline for the last several years.

Most of the estimations that I have read place Google at more than 70% of the present market share. What will be their global market share in five years time? Even if they grow their market share in Russia and China their overall world share may fall because of the increase in non-Latin Alphabet searches.

Getting Ranked on Baidu Yandex and Rambler

Yandex does not accept site submissions from sites hosted outside Russia or sites not in Russian. This does not mean, however, that domain names have to be from the former Soviet Union (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan) but hosted with an IP address from a Russian speaking country OR with pages in Russian.

By chance, Yandex offers free hosting services, so starting a Russian language site is not as hard as it may seem. Sites are indexed quicker if it is significantly linked to by sites hosted in Russia and Russian language sites, similar to the Google algorithm that gives greater value to a link to your site if the linker is in your field.

I don’t read Chinese or Russian but have been able to find how to upload a URL on these sites. Unlike Google, Baidu has merged all of their search results together – organic and paid.

Probably the best way to be a top 10 player in the Baidu SERP’s is to pay. Capitalism is alive and well in China, and with a billion future clients it may be worth your while. To be honest, the best way to be on the Google or Yahoo Front page is also by advertising.

To improve user experience, Baidu has introduced “phonetic” or “pin-yin” search which allows users to type in Chinese keywords using English alphabets. They do advertise Pay for Performance (P4P) and they tailor advertising solutions. To rank well organically, you must first realize that the Chinese search audience is very Chinese oriented. Your landing page must be fully in Chinese and presented in the Chinese style. Similar issues arise in other countries; a Japanese site made by a Texan will not be accepted. So, plan on hiring a Chinese team to include a copywriter – not a translator – and a graphic artist. These folks should be born and raised in mainland China, not American of Chinese origins.

The Baidu site states that the Simplified Chinese language is their language of choice so do not be concerned (yet) about the multiple languages available Like all search engines, Baidu does not guarantee your site will be crawled. Like all search engines, once listed on Baidu, you can improve your position by providing high quality content that you regularly keep up to date and your site must have inbound links from Chinese sites.

As an end note; the literal meaning of Baidu is “hundreds of times” and represents persistent search for the ideal. Yandex is explained as “Yet Another iNDEXer”.

Submitting your Site to Foreign Search Engines

Most website will not be listed in the foreign language search engines unless by chance. Using this very short tutorial you will be able to submit your website to several foreign language search engines. If you have a country that you would like included in this tutorial, leave a comment requesting your country, language or search engine of preference and it will be included.

Submitting your Site to Baidu

Click this link to submit your site to Baidu, fill in the http line and the code – in the example below 6HXW.

Hit the enter button (OK, the button next to the captcha code that probably means enter) and you are done.

Submitting your Site to Yandex

Submitting in the Russian sites requires at least one page in Russian. I created a new blog post that is a translation of the Services Page for Cindy King on her site.

How do you do this? Go to the Google, English to Russian Translation page, paste in your text and hit enter.

Once you create a page in Russian you submit that page to the Yandex Webmaster Tool to submit your Russian page and enter the captcha code. Use the Google Russian to English translation page to read any message that comes up.

You may experience several different error messages, but don’t give up. It took me a couple of trys, but it was actually easy (and you have my translations to begin with!).

Submitting your Site to Rambler

Rambler does take a bit more effort, but I was able to do this using the online translation tools from Google in less than 10 minutes. You will be able to do it in about two minutes. Go to the Rambler Регистрация (registration) page, again with your link to your Russian page.

This is a partial snapshot of the registration page. I actually had two different pages while submitting, but the sequence was the same on both pages.
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Each line has been translated by Google, enter the appropriate data, again linking to your page in Russian. Keep in mind that no translation tool is perfect, but my translation will get you through the process.

Название сайта is your site name. Choose an appropriate name and translate it into Russian.

URL головной страницы is your site URL. (an example of translation tools not working, I translated this text from Russian to English and Google told me “URL pages headache”. Pretty sure that is not 100% correct.)

Описание translates to description. I included 2 paragraphs, again translated by Google.

Контактное лицо is your contact person, probably your name, or your site administrator.

E-mail (or E-mail Контактное лицо) is the email address of the person listed as your site contact.

Finally, there are 2 buttons at the bottom of the form, I chose the button on the left, and it worked. I have to assume this means submit.

Finally…

After you hit that button on the left you should get to a page that shows:
Ваша страница принята к регистрации и будет рассмотрена в ближайшее время. which means that “your page is accepted for registration and will be reviewed shortly”. Isn’t Russian an easy language to work with?

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