Google is attempting to jump over language barriers in a single bound. The search king this week launched a new feature to convert search results into 12 different languages. The long-term implications could be a boon for e-commerce.Dubbed Google Translate, the tool is aligned with the company’s mission to make the world’s information universally accessible. The new cross-language feature allows searchers to find and view results on foreign language Web pages in their own native language.
“If the ideal result page to a query is written in a language that you don’t understand, then up until now it would be very hard to get access to this information,” Google research scientist Franz Och wrote on Google’s blog. The tool is initially available for searchers who speak English, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.
This is an interesting development because, of course, you can track what country your users came from with Web analytics. Typically, if you are getting significant traffic from a particular country, you may decide that you want to translate your content for their reading enjoyment — and for your potential profit.
Google Translation could be the first step in the process of making the web more universal. Imagine if folks from any country who spoke any tongue could read your content, and you could convince them to make purchases. Of course, there are cultural differences that could cause some stumbling blocks. Nevertheless, this has interesting long-term potential.
I was discussing this with Greg Sterling today from Sterling Market Intelligence. He hadn’t considered the e-commerce angle initially, but validated it at some level. Here’s what he said:
“Google presents Google Translate as a way to improve the experience of non-English speakers becasuse there are many more web sites in English than there are in other languages. So it opens up that content to people in other countries, but it does go both ways and it may yield transactions based on making more sites more accessible.
“There’s a challenge in doing business in other countries and cultures. You have to speak the language and there are some cultural issues. This is not going to address those nuances of culture, but it’s a quick and dirty way for your site to get exposed to people in other places. I think travel is going to be one of those categories where this is immediately beneficial.”
I agree with Greg. The Internet is just getting started. This could be the beginning of somethign marvelous. Of course, web analytics vendors already offer some great geographic stats, but what more might we do if the whole word was really our oyster? if language wasn’t an issue?