Hi.

I have a domain let's say example.com. The domain have 5 pages (frontpage, services, contact, etc) and the content is written in english.

What i want to do is when a visitor from let's say France visit the website, to see the french version (all content to be in french), under the same domain/directory (i don't want to do this: example.com/fr).

So, the same content but translated in french will be printed (when a visitor from France enter the website) on the same pages as on the english version.

I think this way it may help me promoting the website on different language directories, forums, etc. using the same link (example.com).

My question is:
What do you think that are the disadvantages of using this method ? Someone did this and experienced Google penalties or this kind of stuff ?


Thanks.

I haven't heard of anyone being penalised by this but it does go against Google's own suggestion of domain.com/language

Will the language selection be automatic? And is there any particular reason you want to do it this way?

Thanks for your answer.

I wasn't aware about Google's suggestion on this, i will read those guidelines in detail.

Yes, tha language selection will be made via a ip address geolocation script. The visitor enter the website and the script prints content based on the visitor location.

The point is that if i will do it using the .com/language approach i will have practically different website for each language /fr /de ,etc.

While this is not a problem, i were thinking that is more efficient to promote a single website domain.com instead of doing it for each language.
I will make a link from a french web directory today, one from a german web dir tomorrow, and so long.. links that point in the same dirrection.. and as a result maybe the PR will increase more easily, much easyer to get the website to rank well on some keywords, etc.

I think it is called as globalization or localization

make me correct if i m wrong.

I would prefer keeping the main site in English then create sub folders or sub domains for the other language. In that way I can target keywords and traffic more properly per country.