Here is a plug-in for WordPress that is going to add more international visitors’ numbers to your traffic statistics. Please note that I’ve tried this plug-in for a month but decided to remove it 
This post will inform you about the plug-in and how it affected my blog last month but my next post (in a few days) will be about how to uninstall Global Translator plug-in from your Wordpress blog.
The Global Translator plug-in slowly translates your existing posts automatically using the free translation services (Google’s, Yahoo’s Babelfish, etc) and stores them into your sitemap. This basically allows Google and other search engine bots to crawl these pages and index the translated posts. It means more international organic traffic and it’s all good. But…
How Global Translator Plug-in Works in a nutshell
First, let’s explore what this plug-in is actually doing. Global Translator Plug-in will connect to free online translation services to translate your blog posts one by one at a certain interval time to avoid you for being banned (for spamming these services, obviously). You can specify this setting should you want to play safer.
You can specify which translation engine that you want to use, although most people would definitely go for Google Translation Services (it provides the most possible translated languages & some say it provides more accurate translations).
The posts will then be translated according to the interval one by one and these translated posts will be accessible through your main blog’s url + “/THE_LANGAGE_ACRONYM”. So if I have Japanese translated posts, it will be available on my http://www.cravingtech.com/blog/ja/.
The translated files will be stored physically under your wp-content/gt-cache folder.
The Global Translator plug-in also has an option to add the translated posts URL to your sitemap which will make it even easier for search engine bots to find these new posts.
“Global Translator Plug-in boosts traffic”. Is it true?
Yes, it is true. Since people without any English background would probably search the internet using his/her own language as the keywords, having translated posts will give them keywords’ matches. For example, I received hits from Spanish keywords such as “itext salto de pagina”, “palabras que utilizan los hombres”, whatever they mean 
I investigated which translated post contents got hits in March 2009 (when I decided to give a trial to this plug-in) and here are some statistics:
- 106 unique visits from Dutch keywords
- 77 unique visits from Spanish keywords
- 33 unique visits from Italian keywords
- 40 unique visits from Japanese keywords
- and a few more from other foreign keywords.
They are not huge numbers, but since not all posts have been translated yet, the number is still quite a good number of visitors gained from foreign search engines (and foreign sites linking to the translated posts) using Global Translator Plug-in.
Global Translator Plug-in Issues
Okay, before you all get excited because of this post, there are some things that you need to consider before you decide to install and use Global Translator plug-in in your blog.
Issue #1: It’s against Google Translation Service policy to keep the translated pages for more than 15 days (thanks to Digital Inspiration blog to bring this up). You can also read a bit of discussion on a Google group thread.
Note: So far, none of the blogs have been banned or penalized (at least officially) when they are using this plug-in. I’ve been in contact with the plug-in author and even the plug-in site has not been banned for providing such services (even have a nice PageRank). If you really want to take the risk, some say to keep the cache only for 15 days and let the plug-in re-generates it. This is more like a TOS cheating than a workaround though.
You can also use the other translation services if you are scared of upsetting Mr. Google. But you may upset them and the other services are only offering certain languages (much lesser than the Google’s one)
Issue #2: If you put AdSense on your posts, then not all languages are supported and it *may* be against Google AdSense TOS if you include AdSense in the non-supported languages’ posts.
Note: According to Google AdSense TOS regarding the languages:
Please also be aware that placing the AdSense code on pages with content primarily in an unsupported language is not permitted by the AdSense program policies.
It says content “primarily” in an unsupported language. Now, since our primary content is an English language blog, it’s unclear how this TOS applies to translated posts. I’ve searched the AdSense forum for this issue but the answers were not definite. Some say it’s ok but others didn’t comment at all. So, it’s your call. But if you really want to be safe and still want to use this plug-in, disable the unsupported countries from ever being translated by the Global Translator plug-in.
Issue #3: Unreachable URLs on Google Webmaster Tools.
Note: Since it’ll take some time for the pages to be translated, you’ll get unreachable URLs error periodically reported by Google. Whether this will affect anything, I’m not sure but it does sound bad. For example, I have 989 unreachable URLs reported while waiting for the posts to be translated and saved to the server.
Issue #4: High CPU usage/server load when pages are being translated.
Note: Why you should care? Because your hosting cares. If your site is eating the server’s CPU usage, you will be warned and you might get banned in an extreme case. I never had this problem because I use WP-SuperCache plug-in. I’d recommend you to use a caching plug-in, if you decide to install Global Translator plug-in.
Issue #5: Some bloggers reported of a change in Google’s search results (in a bad way)
Note: Duplicate contents, having too many new posts all of a sudden, etc were the possibilities. But again, some bloggers also said that duplicate contents don’t affect anything, etc. So hopefully some of you can debate them here.
Conclusion
So! The conclusion…… is that it is unclear whether we all should use this plug-in or not. I have read these issues from other blogs before but since it attracted quite a nice traffic without the need of doing anything, I decided to keep the plug-in.
However, a few days ago, I decided to just ditch this plug-in away. There are too many uncertainties and unclear risks that this blog has to take. Since this blog mainly gets its visitor from search engines, it may as well be closed down if Google penalizes it.
Global Translator plug-in really boosts traffic as it promised. However there are other factors that you may want to consider. Even though the problems haven’t been confirmed 100%, they are real enough for you to worth thinking about. On my next post in a few days, I’ll be posting how to uninstall Global Translator plug-in completely, step by step.
Whether you decide to use this plug-in or not, it’s entirely up to you. But you may want to read other bloggers who have decided to uninstall the plug-in too: Harsh Agrawal and Clement Nyirenda.
Visit Global Translator plug-in official site if you are willing to take the risk.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
I gues I can test this out on my other blog. Or those blog hosted for free. In that way, if g00gle wont allow this kind of translator program (because they do have their own translator), I wont be hardly hit.
Ron
Tnomeralc Web Design Toys´s last blog post..Churches in Cavite
I’ve been curious about these types of tools for some time. I assumed Google just translates your page when searching for a person’s term and provides your offering in the translated language, but I guess it holds greater weight if it’s already in the language.
It’s a hard decision with some potential benefit but a lot of risk if Google bans you.
Jodeci´s last blog post..Chasing the Dream: The Case Story
I only have my content in english because I only want questions and comments in english. That is why I choose not to use a translator. Not only that, if the visitor really needed the information, they could just use google translate. Not only that, with automatic translators you make a lot of grammar mistakes, making your site look bad.
Megaphase.info´s last blog post..Alternate method of form error messages in VisualBasic.net
I have been using this plugin for atleast 3.5 months now, and I must say I have to agree with most of the things you have said. As for adsense, I have enabled only those languages which are supported by adsense and there has been no issue with duplicate content. so 2 out of 5 issues are no-issues for me. But yeah, other 3 are still a pain and I am unsure how it gonna affect my SERP if i uninstall this plugin.
Raju´s last blog post..4 FREE Tools to Track & Recover Your Stolen Laptop
Sweet; was actually considering for a while whether to do this on The Nexus or not.
Think the duplicate / adsense penalty and poss. TOS issues I’ll give it a miss…after all traffic is not everything!
Donace | The Nexus´s last blog post..Traffic Android Review
I haven’t used it. But, it was good to know about the details!
Nihar´s last blog post..March 2009 Blog Traffic & Income statistics
I dont blame you. I tried using something similar to that one top but it just bogged down my site.
-Jack
Here are some clarifications on this plugin:
1. Use only those languages as per adsense TOS (29 lang).
2. Set to delete or refresh cache after 15 days to remain gud with Google translate TOS (there is option for this in Global plugin options).
3. Only show this plugin on single post pages, this prevent translation of index, category and tags pages.
4. SEO after-effect are different for each blog, usually it shdnt cause any issue as same content in different language is different in total
5. If u already using, dont dump it – it might effect blog badly.
Let me try to answer the problems mentioned by you.
Issue #1 It does exist and you can either delete the cache or use another engine (I’m not sure abt Global Translator). How on earth would deleting the cache be cheating TOS???? I still cant understand the logic there.
Issue #2 I’ll explain with a simple example. I have a post written in English and a reader is translating the post to Hindi ( national language of India) using Google translator and not using any plugin. So now Adsense is shown in pages where content is hindi and is an unsupported language according to Google Adsense. So doesnt that also become violation which is not under your control? If you have more info on this, lets discuss. I feel the unsupported language thing is for the primary language of your blog.
Issue #3 & 4 might be the problem with Global Translator plugin. The Taragana Gold plugin does not have this issue.
Issue #5 Google webmasters blog clearly says that same post translated into another language will not be treated as duplicate content. So I dont think there is an issue with Duplicate content.
The solutions mentioned here are again debatable. We might be able to find a solution by having more discussion.
Well you are not supposed to keep it for more than 15 days (meaning, you are supposed to delete it after 15 days, not re-generate it)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this though. Hopefully there are more people come into the discussion
I used this plugin for a while and after getting lots of issues I removed the plugin..
removing indexed pages from Google was easy using webmaster tool as I removed the whole language directory…
Though we can debate on this and can find a solution but for now since we are unsure about the effect of this plugin I personally will recommend users to wait for a while…if we see any official announcement from publisher of the plugin and some logical answer anywhere in the blogosphere.
Harsh Agrawal´s last blog post..Comfy magazine style template for blogspot || Blogspot theme
Yeah. Apparently there are too many unknowns. Would be great to find some clear answers from Google directly, though
The only problem may be the expense. Language translation is a difficult and demanding field. Generating an accurate translation requires a lot of time. Good translators are professionals who are paid well because of the importance of what they do.
i’m confused , i like the plugin idea and want more traffic to my blog , but i heard much issue about it so i don’t know but i wait more posts in this post about the members try with this plugin .
Money Academy´s last blog post..Searching for strong virus blocker ? check this features from kaspersky
I was like you a few months earlier.. decided to install it because of the traffic and ended up regretting it. If you install but yet decide to uninstall the plug-in later (like I did), it will create a nightmare on your blog because you can end up losing lots of backlinks and 404 errors
Hi Michael, only to inform that the plug-ins author made some interesting changes in the last relase (1.2.6), that probably solve the “Unreachable URLs problem” in google wm tools:
“replaced 503 HTTP code (”Network Temporarily Unreachable”) with a 302 redirect on not yet translated pages in order to remove the warning messages on GooGle WebMaster Tool.”
bye
G.
gaianorm´s last blog ..Ecco come ti illumino un monumento
Thanks for the detailed breakdown on this plugin. I sooooo want to install it for the traffic boost, but the comments about 404’s and possible Adsense TOS violations scare the hell out of me. Has anybody seen an official ruling from Google on this?
Thanks, look forward to more comments on this topic
I remember reading it on a Google page that you can only keep the translated contents to a certain period. Can’t remember where though
I’ve been running this plugin on a couple of my sites and it has definately negatively affected them so Im slowly removing it ensuring its not going to massively increase my 404s
Wise decision. I know the plug-in has a lot of potential but also risks