How Google determines the language of search results

When you search on Google, you may get results in languages other than the one you searched in. It happens in places where many people speak 2 or more common languages. This page explains how:

• The language of results is automatically determined.
• You can manually filter for a particular language.

How we determine the language of results

In many countries and regions, people use multiple languages to search on Google. To help multilingual people, Google uses several factors to automatically determine what language or languages would be most helpful for results.

Language the user searched in

When you search, the language that you use is an important factor. It helps our systems understand if you want content in a language different from your language settings.

For example, a person in France with French language settings can search and receive content in:

• English
• Arabic
• Other languages

Helpfulness of content

Our systems understand if content in a particular language is helpful for users who search in different languages. This is common in locales where people understand more than one language especially, if there isn’t enough info in the searched language.

Display Language setting

You can control the language used for buttons and other display text within Google Search with the display language setting. This helps Google determine what language to show search results in, but they don't filter all results to that language.

Browser & device settings

Some browsers and devices allow you to set preferred languages. If browsers or devices can communicate these preferences to Google, this may help determine what language to show search results in. But they don't filter all results to that language.

Location & Region settings

To help determine the language of search results, Google uses the locale you search from. Your location is helpful when words are spelled the same way in different languages, such as “taxi.” Google automatically determines your location, but you can change your region settings any time.

Information provided by content creators

If you create multilingual content, you can tell Google which version should show up for particular languages.

Filter results to a particular language

There’re 2 ways to manually filter the search results to a particular language:

• Results Language Filter: This is a filter that appears above search results and lets you restrict results to a preferred language or languages. Learn how to use results language filters.
• Advanced Search language filter: Filter results on the Advanced Search page.

Language filters are designed primarily for web results. Some search features might not change when you use them such as Knowledge Graph displays and Top Stories. They also might not work for web results if Google can’t detect the language of a page. This can happen for various reasons, such as if:

• A page has more than one language on it.
• The content doesn’t follow our guidance on how to help Google understand multilingual sites.