What is it about?

The purpose is to test the ability of major search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, to distinguish between German and English-language documents. 50 queries, using words common in German and in English, were posed to the engines. The advanced search option of language restriction was used, once in German and once in English. The first 20 results per engine in each language were investigated. While none of the search engines faces problems in providing results in the language of the interface that is used, both Google and MSN face problems when the results are restricted to a foreign language. Search engines were only tested in German and in English. We have only anecdotal evidence that the problems are the same with other languages. Searchers should not use the language restriction in Google and MSN when searching for foreign-language documents. Instead, searchers should use Yahoo or Ask. If searching for foreign language documents in Google or MSN, the interface in the target language/country should be used.

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Why is it important?

The paper demonstrates a problem with search engines that has not been previously investigated.

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This page is a summary of: Problems with the use of web search engines to find results in foreign languages, Online Information Review, September 2008, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/14684520810914034.
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