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    4. Has any one seen negative SEO effects from using Google Translate API

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    Has any one seen negative SEO effects from using Google Translate API

    International SEO
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    • VERBInteractive
      VERBInteractive last edited by

      We have a site currently in development that is using the Google Translate API and I am having a massive issue getting screaming frog to crawl and all of our non-native English speaking employees have read through the translated copy in their native language and the general consensus is it reads at a 5th grade level at best. My questions to the community is, has anyone implemented this API on a site and has it a) helped with gaining traffic from other languages/countires and b) has it hurt there site from an SEO standpoint.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • VERBInteractive
        VERBInteractive @becole last edited by

        Hi Bernadette, I completely agree with that translation being human. Your are correct it wasn't google translate messing with the crawl, but it was a great argument to get removed 🙂

        Where in screaming frog are you able to crawl slower? I have dug around the program and can't find the option.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • becole
          becole last edited by

          Overall, if you are going to translate your website, it really should be translated by a human rather than an API. There are certain ways things should be translated and written that an API just cannot do properly. It's more of a user experience and readability issue than anything else.

          It sounds as if the screaming frog crawling issue isn't related to the translation issue--it is a crawling issue. You may want to see if you can crawl much slower, which is a setting in screaming frog.

          VERBInteractive 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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