UPDATE: This product is now outdated, and is no longer available. I have removed the links from this article. Translation Gold was a brilliant idea and worked beautifully for awhile. My understanding is that Google decided they didn’t like it, and dropped all cached translated pages from their index, rendering the program useless for SEO. The program still worked well for non-SEO purposes (instant translation of your site), but then Google started blocking such scripts, as they continued to develop their translation engine, and eventually integrated translation into their own web browser. To get the most up-to-date information and recommendations, please join my free newsletter.
Edition #72 – 8/2/2006
If you’ve been around Eric’s Tips for awhile, you’ll know the name Jonathan Leger because I’ve promoted some of his other products.
He’s a good friend in the business, and he happens to be one of the foremost AdSense experts out there.
Translation Gold is a new script that translates your website into eight different languages (9 including English) on the fly for visitors.
Beyond just translating the pages, it actually creates new pages, so that the search engines can index them. This can literally extend your global reach into areas you were previously not reaching.
I’m going to keep this review short and sweet for a couple of reasons…
1) It’s a very simple application, and there’s not a lot to explain.
2) I created a video so you can watch me using the program… I can’t show it to you any more plainly than that.
As you’ll see in the unrehearsed video, the script worked flawlessly for me.
(video no longer available)
One of the things I really appreciate about this program is that fact that it’s essentially “white hat”. What I mean by that, is it’s not designed to trick the search engines, or exploit your visitors. It’s designed to provide a genuine service to your users.
After all, people who speak other languages need information too! In this way, you can provide your information across language barriers, and increase your income at the same time. In most cases, AdSense will automatically detect the language of the page, and display ads to visitors in their native language.
The main drawback would probably be the fact that the translation isn’t perfect. I think even the best translation engines are still limited to a somewhat literal interpretation, so some things could be slightly off. However, the technology is very good, and the translation is obviously good enough for Google to index the translated pages.
I highly recommend this tool. It’s easy to use, it helps people, and in my opinion the price can’t be beat.
(link removed – product no longer available)
As always, you can leave your comments here in the blog.
Have a great day!
Hi Eric,
The main concern I have about this is the accuracy-or the lack thereof-of the translations. (Since I’ve been dealing with foreign translation accuracy for the last six years) The copy on this sales page doesn’t address this issue at all.
I’ve seen some free services you can integrate into your web pages that will do this automatically. Do you know if the quality of the translation provided by this program is any better than that offered by these free services?
Eric:
I liked your videos and all the reviews you have done. They’re great! the noBS approach is the only way………….So, what a small world……….I was watching your video and for a quick sec. I thought you had my website I just last week, put up on your video……….www.a1worldhotels.com. I put this site up as a front for a Hotels Theme generator I bought…………Hotels Around the World…………I recreated this site in XSitePro so I could update it easier……….I also added some links to some premade websites I bought, they’re closer to the bottom of the pages. They are “Cheap Airline Tickets”, “AirLine Travel Tips”, and “Travel Tips”. and on the second page (top right in the Nav bar) “Hotels Around the World”
If you could look at it and give me you opion, I sure would be greatful. This is my first real site……….I kinda like it………..I just don’t know if it’s good enough?
Anyways, my question is would the Translation Gold transate all of the premade sites I have attached to this website? and also the Hotels Theme generated site “Hotels Around the World”.
How would I translate the Theme generator Site as I can’t even edit the pages in the Hotels Theme Generator………..I’m sure you saw the script that was being sold. You put in your infomation and the script generates the website for you.
Well, Thank you for your time concerning this matter.
Ron Martin
Hi Eric
I have been using this script for ages and it does help to increase the adsense click through rate – i posted on several japanese forums and have had clicks fro that part of the world. Since it scrapes Google translation service the translation is accurate.
You can intergrate Babelfish if you want but believe me thsi is quicker and the updates are good also support.
I am not connected with the provoder of the script but have it installed on around 500 sites. It works…
Cheers
Mike
Eric,
Sorry, It’s me again, I forgot to ask………….I have some travel e-books, I’m putting on the site…………Would this translator translate the e-books also? That would be nice to sell the e-books to different countries.
Thanks again!
Ron Martin
Neill- As far as the accuracy, I think it depends on what kind of content you have. If you’re giving instructions on dis-assembling bombs, then obviously you wouldn’t want to use machine-generated translation. But from what I’ve heard, the translation is good enough for people to read it in their native language.
While there are plenty of free web-based translators for translating a chunk of text, I haven’t seen any that integrate into your website and traslate the pages, as you say. Feel free to tell me about any that you know of.
Mike- thanks for the testimonial.
On a similar note, I actually did a review last year about Kelvin Hui’s Multilingual Marketer, which is a brilliant program, but it uses Babelfish and gets blocked usually after translating about 10 pages. You can see my review here:
I suppose Google may implement something similar at some point in the future, but the way Jon is doing it, seems unlikely that it will get blocked at any time.
Ron- Your site looks pretty good. It’s nice to see that you’ve customized it. yes this script can translate your site, and any other of your sites. Basically it will translate any page you are linked to that is in the same directory. If you have other sites in other directories, or on other domains, you can simply install the script on them too. He allows it to be installed on unlimited domains.
Hi Eric,
I was looking at this program a little while ago and wrote Jon about it to see what translation service he used as I know Babelfish does a poor job of translation not to mention the restrictions Eric already mentioned on software that uses Babelfish.
This was Jon’s reply to my question:
“Hi Stephen,
No, it uses Google Translation Services, which has no page count limits.
It does have a word count limit of about 1800 or so words per translated
page, though, so keep that in mind.
Jon”
That would indicate that as of right now the current restriction is very lack and few people should have a problem with it. However one thing I forgot to ask Jon and I can now see the answer to in Eric’s video is whether the translation service Translation Gold uses is good enough that it will cause the AdSense ads on your translated pages to also then display ads in that countries native language. After watching Eric’s video it would appear the translation is not good enough to convince Google to display on a German content page German AdSense ads.
To me this is a huge problem. Mike (his post is above) who has used this technology for a while now said “I have been using this script for ages and it does help to increase the adsense click through rate – I posted on several Japanese forums and have had clicks from that part of the world. Since it scrapes Google translation service the translation is accurate.”. Now this may be true, but I have to wonder what Mike’s CTR is on those page. Do you track this Mike?
Now even if the CTR is poor it can be said that any extra clicks you can get are better then none, especially for not to much extra work. I don’t think though people should get the idea in their heads that if their site makes say $10.00 a day in AdSense revenue that by adding this script they can times that by 9 (number of languages the program translates). One reason is that I’m sure those people in other countries are paying far less to display those ads since they have little competition and as such the payouts to AdSense publishers will also be much lower per click. Secondly if you speak English and you land on a German webpage with AdSense on it how many people here would click on the ads if you can’t read what they say? Chance are none of us would.
My guess is that those who are clicking on the ads on say a German page showing English AdSense ads are people who are German and speak fluent German, but may also speak some English as a second language. To me that is a very small market as you are catering to only those who can speak more then one language.
Now don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to bash the program as like I said before some extra money for little work is better then nothing. I’m just trying to make note of some of the things about this program I think that make it somewhat lacking. If someone could somehow get the AdSense ads to also display ads in the translated pages native language then they’d have a real money maker on their hands!
Thanks,
Stephen
HI Eric,
Thanks for your review. I am not sure whether you’d clicked on different translation buttons on the index page triple time consecutively. Errors prompt up on my test site 🙁
It would be more comprehensive if you could do the experiment on the site with translation gold installed. If it did not happen to your site, may be it my own config. problem.
Thks/Jerk
Stephen – I can assure you that the translation IS good enough for the ads to appear in the visitor’s native language. I’ve used both babelfish, and Google translation on a number of sites, and both of them have resulted in ads being displayed in the correct language. However, I have noticed it’s been sort of hit and miss with Jon’s script on the one site I installed it on so far. I’ve been assuming it’s because the pages haven’t been spidered by Google yet, but after investigating it, I think there’s an issue with the way AdSense sees the auto-generated php pages.
If I view the dynamically generated pages (the first time the page is transated), it is showing the correct ad language sometimes, but less than 50% of the time.
But if I go back and view the static version of the page via the script’s cache folder, it is displaying AdSense in the correct language 100% of the time.
So in conclusion, I’m not sure if it’s an issue to be concerned about or not. Maybe it’s just a matter of waiting for Google to spider the pages, or maybe the script needs to be tweaked so that it displays the page differently.
Jerk- I’ve clicked on them many times consecutively with no problems.
This is a topic which has caused me headaches for the last 10 years or so. I have been working in the German IT business since 1982 and translations were always neccessay for various things.
To get good translations you need a good understanding of, not only the two languages, but also of the technical vocabulary, the regional differences of the languages and the mentality of the two cultures. These are the reasons why translations are expensive and take time. This is also the reason I cannot recommend software and services like this.
Of course when translation software and services appeared a few years back, I took a close look at them. My opinion has not changed over the years. If you need a “quick and dirty” understanding of what is written in a foreign language, a translation service such as Google and Yahoo will help you get the gist of it.
But, if you are looking to get extra content and want to reach foreign markets this is not enough. All of the software I have seen, including this one, translates too literally, making a good report or article just plain “gobbldygook” in the translation.
Here’s a simple example in German. A lot of English speaking people use the word “well” to start of an answer. This is hardly ever translated in context. Instead it gets translated to “Brunnen” which is the word a water well. Imagine this happening ten times with other words, then you get just a rubbish translation which is often hard to read, let alone understand.
Another point you have to consider. If you offer a rubbish translation, you will be seen as a person or company who has a low standard of work.
We all know that even Adsense websites need to offer visitors quality content. Moving into foreign markets is a good idea, but with the standard of translations you get with software like this, you will not make a one time visitor come back again. You get one click if you are lucky and they are gone!
Looking at how Google is kicking out websites which do not offer user quality, I doubt if using software and services like this, is a wise decision in the long run.
Just to add to this theme, I posted this commentary to my Blog some days ago http://michael.holdcroft.name/
Hi Eric
Your video of Translation Gold as always was of great benefit and informative. However, although I have purchased Adsense Templates, and could see the appeal of this software,I also wanted to know if this software could be used with a physical product site. I own a Football Souvenir site and would like to consider adding additional currency options, and with this it would be useful to offer a translation service and open up the Far Eastern markets who love anything Football related. I have submitted an enquiry to the support e-mail site at translation gold, but are receiving auto responder messengers from the FAQ’s which don’t provide me with an answer. Have you a way of finding out?
Many Thanks
Chris
Hi Eric,
“I’ve been assuming it’s because the pages haven’t been spidered by Google yet, but after investigating it, I think there’s an issue with the way AdSense sees the auto-generated php pages. ”
That could very well be the issue Eric and if true then it would seem to me that unless Jon or Kevin can change their software to counter this then the real benefits of teh software will be far less then they could be. Having seen your video I noted that the ads showing in the pages native language were far far below 50% which is my main concern. It would be nice though if you could update us on your site in another week or two to see if the ads do in fact show up in the pages language more often once Google spiders and indexes your site.
Michael raised my other concern adn that is quality content and wether Google will see these translated pages as good or bad content. I know Google is starving for more pages in non-English text, but that doesn’t mean they want their listings to be crappy either. If a bunch of people start using software that does a poor job of translation and it starts filling up their listings then Google will eventually take notice and could start eliminating sites they see as spammy. Not saying it will happen and certainly it won’t for a long tme to come, but if a ton of people start doing this then it could.
“maybe the script needs to be tweaked so that it displays the page differently”
Since you know Jon maybe you could ask him about this Eric and see if there is something he can do to possibly get better results with displayed AdSense ads on non-English webpages.
-Stephen
Eric, I’m sorry to say I’m disappointed to see this piece of software recommended by you – I generally enjoy and appreciate what you write very much and consider it to be interesting and high-quality.
I checked this software out a little while ago and found the quality of the translations to be not just a little “off”, but absolutely abysmal! I can read French and German quite well and found the translated content very jarring and annoying with about 80% incorrect grammar and syntax. Imagine how much worse it must be for a native speaker of one of those languages- someone using this tool to translate their site would IMHO lose a lot of credibility. So I disagree on this being designed for humans, not search engines.
Given the pretty steep price tag on the software, I think one could do better overall hiring an amateur translator.
Aside from this one issue, keep up the good stuff Eric!
Nicole
Nicole – Thanks for your input. It utilizes Google translation, which from what I’ve read is pretty decent. I’m fairly proficient in French myself, and I’m able to read the French translations. I’m sure you’re right that a native speaker would have more of a problem with it though.
Google’s translation service is obviously designed for humans to use, so I still don’t think this would equate to gaming the SE’s. As for losing credibility, again I think that depends on what type of site you have. If you’re dealing with rocket science then yeah you probably need to hire a translator, but I don’t think it’s necessary for most people.
Here’s how I would prove my point. I often (at least a couple times a month) come across non-English language sites in my research, and so I use either Babelfish or Google to translate the site on-the-fly. Of course the translation into English has some problems, but I am always grateful to be able to read a site that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to read.
As far as the price of the program vs. hiring an amateur translator, I think you’d need to price out everything you need translated to compare the cost. If you have many sites to translate, then it’s really no comparison; the software would be much cheaper. Even if you found someone to translate for $5/page, that would only be 15 pages until it cost more than the software. And what if you have 100’s or 1000’s of pages on your site?
Now that I’ve finished my defense, I will certainly say I appreciate your input very much, and it is duly noted 🙂
I’d like to hear what everyone else thinks, especially those who are non-English speaking natives…
For everyone- here is an article I found, which seems to support my theory. The author comes to the conclusion that the best affordable option for US based businesses is to use machine-translation, and preferable to host the translation on your own server…
I just noticed he’s using Translation Gold on his own sites too.
DEAR FRIEND ERIC.
GOOD DAY.
I WAS SUFFERD FROM HEAVY COLD CASE THE LAST DAYS .
I VISITED THE TRANSLATION GOLD WEBSITE,I FOUND IT VERY SUCCESS PROGRAM
BUT I HOPE TO ADD THE TRANSLATION INTO ARABIC TOO TO COMPLETE THE TEN
LANGUAGES.
I WAIT YOUR INSTRUCTIONS TO ME HOW I COMMENCE AND WHEN?
THANKS FOR YOUR ADVISES MY DEAR.
Hi Said, Since Google does offer English to Arabic, I would suggest going on RentACoder and having a coder add Arabic to the script. This is just a guess, but I bet you could get it done for under $50 since you already have the source code…
I sent this note to support:
Listen, am a programmer as well and I got to thinking.
If I change the content every darn day (or more, by deleting the stuff in the tcache) then when one of the robots gets around to crawling the links in the tcache.. well, it will catch only the links there that day… So what if the next day they change? Are the long filenames changing as well? And if so… what’s the use of that? How often does the robot come around in any case? So why would that increase the clicks in Adsense?
It seems to me that your code is best for those sites that change very little of their content! Right? If I keep changing the content by either deletion or by setting the update to 1 day… if the crawler’s schedule is a week… then how does that increase my position with Adsense? Sorry if am not that clear.
Just something about this bothers me. Am thinking that if I change my content very infrequently will I benefit the most, vs changing my content frequently. What’s your understanding of this? You came up with the code so you must know.
js
I also find that he’s not responding very well to support requests. All I get is that e-mail telling me to check the faqs.
JS- Jon or his team will respond to your email. Like everyone, they’re very busy.
I don’t think there’s any reason to clear the tcache too often. As long as Google spiders the pages, it does not matter if your content changes. It’s the same whether you’re using the script or not; the more pages indexed in Google the better. As long as you’re not changing the file names of your pages, then you will be capturing traffic from people who click on your SE listings, regardless of whether those listings are freshly updated or not.
As for when Google spiders your site, there are a lot of variables there. I good technique is to put a blog on your site, or put links to your site from other blogs which are frequently spidered by the bots.
Well that’s the thing. I have a BLOG. It is visited very often. So I wish to update this BLOG more than once a day. For now I have no way except to delete what’s in the tcache. Unless the programmer gives me a better way.
And that’s why I then wonder about them spiders. If my BLOG keeps changing content more than once a day… how am I faring in the Adsense ranking? So that’s what I would like to know.
js
Hi Eric,
Your friend’s program called ‘Translation Gold’ is interesting and good but I still am not able to buy it because I still haven’t received enough commissions to afford it myself.Escuse me my disgraceful explanations.But I’ll come back to it when I’ll be able to buy it.
I proft by this your last blog ‘Edition #72’ to ask you some my urgent questions as to my ‘The Writing Cash Program’ as follows:
1. I joined for a HostGator ‘Babby’ account of $9.95 monthly and I’m going to build my own first ‘review’ pages for your The Writing Cash and 10-Free-Ebooks’ programs.Therefore if you are so kind to help me , send me a free professional review content for your programs,please.
2. As to the cloacking links,please explain me better once your ‘Beta Refresh’ method.I succeeded to make copy&paste your HTML code into a .txt editor (Notepad).I thoght I’ll get a cloacking link to add it into my ‘AdWords’ ‘Disply URL’ . I got an identical HTML code with yours.Wher can I get this cloaching link?
However you already have a message from mine in your old blog ‘Edition #34.Have you follow lately your blog edition only?
3. My AdWords campaign ads for ‘Writing Cash’ and 10-Free-Ebooks’ charge me about $5 daily each of them but commissions no yet.But I’ll be needed to pause these campaign ads until next monthat least.
Sincerely,
Petre Tudor
JS- I don’t think there would be any problems with putting it on a blog. Again, your SE rankings depend on a number of factors, so I can’t really make any predictions, but my beleif is that you would get more traffic as a result of having your blog in 8 languages.
Petre- for review pages, I think it’s best if you come up with your own content. Google Adwords is cracking down on squeeze pages that don’t provide significant value to the user, so I think it’s now even more important to make sure you’re providing something real, like a personal review.
For link cloaking, it’s called “meta refresh” and I’ve got instructions here:
For your AdWords campaigns, try promoting lots of different products. I recommend using ClickBank products while you’re learning the ropes, because there’s plenty to choose from. I typically send 100 targeted visitors to a campaign and if I don’t make any sales I move on to another product.
Hi Eric,
I’m sorry because I must to come back because I still am confused and maybe I don’t know enough English to make myself understand.
1. As to my first personal review page: Have I to compose and add a related content about partner’s site or about my personal biographical info?
2.As to my meta refresh cloacking links: To get a new links instead of my hoplinks to add them into my AdWords ‘Destination URL’, where must I paste the HTML codes?
3. As to my ppc ad campaigns: I already use Clickbank Marketplace and I have 32 active so far and they charge $10 daily only.I can’t get low priced for my related keywords to start small.I have to pause them and to add another campaign adds.
Respectfully,
Petre Tudor
Petre-
1- I would suggest both. Compose and add content related to the partners site, and add your personal info if it will help establish you as a relibale expert in that particular field. If you are not an expert in the field, then don’t include your personal info.
2- the meta-refresh code goes into a new html page by itself.
3- it takes some trial and error. I get plenty of clicks for 5 cents… it takes time and creativity. To help you find more keywords, you can use a free keyword tool such as http://goodkeywords.com/
Hi Eric,
1. Sorry but I paused all my Adwords campaign ads because charge me more than my daily budget.In this time I’ll teach more to get huge related keyword lists for more my campaign ads and to share them in more sub-topics to create more Ad Goups.
I’ll try to create my first review page related to partner site because I’m not an expert to use my personal info.But this after I’ll better accomodate with my new HostGator.
2.I still haven’t got new cloacking link instead of my hoplink.I have a .ws domain from GDI site and here I have a HTML page to add my banners.Here I pasted my HTML code for a hoplink but I got
the same code and no a new cloacking link.I’m worried because I don’t succeed this my urgent problem.
3.I already have ‘Good Keyword’ site got it from your The Writing Cash Program.
I already use it but it offers 100 or less related keywords for a main keyword only.
Here I saw a interesting feature named ‘Web page Explorer’.I got your Plain Text for your The Writing Cash Program then I got in HTML Document.
When have I to use this HTML Document version for your site?
Can I use these documents for all my sites?
Also I saw the ‘Keyword Table’ feature.From your site I got about 680 single words and about 1450 2 word phrases.
Can I use as my related keywors double 2 word phrases only?
What represints 1W# and 2W3 columns?
Regards,
Petre Tudor
Hi Petre, If you can’t figure out the cloaking I wouldn’t worry about it for now. It’s really an advanced technique, and not an essential part of learning internet marketing. I think you should just get comfortable making regular links before trying to make cloaked links. I’m not sure exactly how to answer your other questions except to say, yes by all means use as many keywords as you can generate, as long as they are related to your topic. Then if certain keywords seem to be drawing untargeted traffic then delete those ones. I use one-word keywords, and 2, 3, 4 and even 5 word phrases.
Hi Eric,
I agree you I’ll postpone my getting cloacking links for later.
BTW your assistant Help center Micah told me I can put my hoplinks in ‘Disply URL’ field and the parner’s URL in ‘Destination URL to hide my hoplinks.Is it this one a method to hide my hoplinks?
Now when my campaign ads are paused by all means I’ll add momr and more related keywords for each campaign in a row.Additionally I’ll divide main huge related keyword lists in more sub-topics and I’ll create more Ad Groups and 2-3 similar ads for each Ad Group’s ad.
I thought you’ll answer me some questions from last my message as to ‘Good Keywords’ free site.
For your The Writing Cash Program I’ll use ‘Keyword Table’ feature from ‘Good Keywords’ site to make a huge keyword list from the 2 columns ‘Single words’ and ‘2 word phrase’ as well.But the most of them there are general words and no related keywords.
Regards,
Petre Tudor
DEAR BEST FRIEND EIRIC .
MY CONDOLENCE FOR YOUR GREAT BROTHER,GOD BLESS HIM AMD FORGAVE HIS PURE SOUL.IN THE HEVEN WITH SANTS AND ANGELS.
I KNOW THIS BAD NEWS FROM MIKE.F.TODAY ONLY.
MY HEART WITH YOU AND MY SOUL TOO.
I PRAY FOR BOTH OF YOU.
I HOPE THAT THE LAST SADNESS.
MY CONDOLENCE FOR YOUR FAMILY.
SEE YOU SOON.