It's been noted that the teams developing these tools don't always communicate with other parts of Google. This may be an instance of that.

Google Translate visitors are fairly numerous. Google would be doing publishers a service by helping us monetize Google translate visitors.

Also, what's the point of even displaying AdSense in millions of cache pages if you can't display the right ads?

I see money going right down the toilet.

Perhaps if enough people complained they might fix the bugs and we can see if it impacts our bottomline.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 7:06 pm (utc) on June 16, 2009]

My sites don't get translated very often, but definitely noticed the cache issue, before I set everything to nocache.

But I have some client sites I should probably check up on; thanks Bill.

Invariably when I check to see if there are any crawling errors for the AdSense bot, the ones listed are some sort of cache. Not necessarily just Google, but Yahoo and Bing as well. It does seem that something is lost when a cached version of a page is viewed.

Two points-

I thought we didn't get paid for content showing on google properties?

and - for the language issue - Google may 'know' that you're an English speaker and shows you english ads anyway (but I wouldn't count on it)

I've been thinking about this for awhile, even before the topic came up. Much of my site gets translated.

The question is "What to do?"

The matter of "cache" I've been thinking about for years and years. All I seem to do is "leave it alone" on odd numbered days and then plump for "no cache" on the even numbered ones.

[added] It would be nice if ASA could offer some input!

[edited by: IanCP at 5:14 pm (utc) on June 17, 2009]

Google may 'know' that you're an English speaker and shows you english ads anyway

If knows my browser is English, but think kiosk situation or visitor, someone else is using my computer (or kiosk) and translating the page into their native language and the ads aren't in their native language.

It makes no sense whatsoever, it should all be the same language.

I thought we didn't get paid for content showing on google properties?

If Google were to profit from ads running on full blown cache pages without sharing that income it would violate the very tenant of fair use for a full web page, not just a snippet, because they would be monetizing the content, so they better be sharing ;)

I thought we didn't get paid for content showing on google properties?

We do if we put the relevant URLs in our Allowed Sites list...

Does anyone have a list of the google cache and translate urls that we can ad to our allowed sites?

They do this from a vast range of IP address.
good question though.

[edited by: Future at 8:13 am (utc) on June 21, 2009]

I didn't have any problems at all with the cache: ads.

I tried messing with my preferred language in Opera before going to translate, making sure my Accept-Language header contained only the language I was translating to (es/fr), and still got English ads.

I never thought of using Javascript to detect language before, but considering JS is what Adsense uses to display the ads, I wonder if there's some sort of JS property which isn't related to the Accept-Language HTTP header but instead reads something from the operating system that Adsense uses to determine which language to display ads in.

Maybe google ads are targeted to your IP location and system language settings? That would explain the mismatch of the ads. Think of it from an advertiser perspective; what sense would it make for the French amazon to display ads to a US visitor, when the US amazon can also do this?

--- or displayed ads about translator services. ---

This might be totaly "off the wall", but wouldn't it make "AdSense" for Google to place Adverts about "Translation Services" on Translate action rather than Adverts that are related to your site content. When the user is trying to translate, the TASK at that point becomes "Translate" and NOT "about Blue widgets". Just throwing it out there...

I just checked the cached copy of one of my sites and it shows the same Google Adsense code as the original.

incrediBILL, regarding:

"If Google were to profit from ads running on full blown cache pages without sharing that income it would violate the very tenant of fair use for a full web page, not just a snippet, because they would be monetizing the content, so they better be sharing ;)"

sadly, they don't share the revenue generated there because they view the cache as their property and unless you "noarchive" meta-tag your sites you agree to let Google cache your site, and per their TOS you agree to forfeit any rights to your content in the cache, including any earnings potential. They view the cache as a service to you. not sure about Google translate but I wouldn't be surprised if the same premise applies.

so this is what the cache is: they are displaying our entire site (including all the text and images) and earning money off it.
that goes a bit beyond fair use, surely. people moan about google news taking headlines and snippets and giving next to nothing back, and here they are taking the whole lot.

i've never seen the point of the cache. the only benefit you get out of them having displaying it is when your site goes down. it doesn't send you any extra traffic that you couldn't get anyway through the search engine link.

glad i noarchived it ages ago.

You're kidding about Google not paying you for anything clicked on in their cache, right?

If this is the case, then why would you not include a noarchive on each of the pages? Am I missing something?

Actually, I've thought about noarchive for a while now, but I heard that doing so may drop you down a notch in ranking... that you are trying to hide something, etc...

Any thoughts on this?

Actually, I've thought about noarchive for a while now, but I heard that doing so may drop you down a notch in ranking... that you are trying to hide something, etc...

Any thoughts on this?

I had not drop in rankings when I made the switch. Just do it.

Nothing good comes of having your site in the cache... but plenty of bad can.

I've thought about noarchive for a while now, but I heard that doing so may drop you down a notch in ranking

I've been NOARCHIVE for a few years now on a couple of sites, nothing negative happened whatsoever except scrapers had one less source to leech from to get at my content.

For more information about the pros and cons of NOARCHIVE, with many links back to articles on WebmasterWorld on the topic, see [noarchive.net...]

per their TOS you agree to forfeit any rights to your content in the cache, including any earnings potential

Since when?

I'd like to see a direct link to that information because that's beyond borderline on copyright infringement, copyright is never OPT-OUT, it's OPT-IN, so monetizing your full blown cache page without permission, and AdSense is obviously permission, would cause some major court cases which is why none of the big SEs show their own bank of ads on cache pages.

agreed with incrediBILL, I suggest this feature long time ago but nothing happened yet.

take it one step further: framing other peoples' websites (without their consent) is already not allowed. not only if you monetize on that content by displaying ads on the frame.
i don't remember ever giving my (opt-in!) consent to let google frame my pages for their cache/translation service. as incredibill said: copyright is never opt-out.

let's face it: what google does here is illegal. they would have to get our approval of framing our web pages in any event. any website who attempts this must ask for permission.

here are the remedies:

- against framing - frame buster javascript:

if (top.location!=self.location) {top.location.replace('/');}

- against google cache - noarchive meta tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

- if required: against translation tool - notranslate meta tag:

<meta name="google" value="notranslate">

I have to say that I've been using Bings translate option, it is fantastic because it has a view that puts two versions of your website side by side (translated version on the right) and you can mouseover the text on the left frame and it is highlighted on the right (excelent as a language learning tool). Much better than that Babelfish mashup.

<meta name="google" value="notranslate">

What about all the other translation tools? Blocking just Google's seems futile.

I use noarchive, but I would like a way to make an exception for archive.org. Does anyone know of a way to do that?

this little bit of php at the top of your page blocks pretty much all of the translation sites, but maybe there's a few other handy sites that it blocks too.

if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])) { ...block it }

Thanks, but that looks a bit drastic to me! I would be worried about it affecting other users.

Back to incrediBILL's request for a direct link from Gomvents on his statement of

per their TOS you agree to forfeit any rights to your content in the cache, including any earnings potential

I would like to see that link as well.

Regarding the translated pages and ads in English, I wonder how much of it is a technical bug vs an ad coverage issue.

It seems like it's been very difficult for ad networks (even google) to crack the international ad market. From our internal stats, this is the fastest growing segment and the lowest CPMs.

FYI, Google's standard M.O. below: prove they've done something wrong that made you lose money or gave them money instead of you and they may credit you up to $1,000 but the burden falls purely on you. As a publisher you have no way of knowing what is going on specifically in terms of lost revenue, clicks etc.

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Gomvents, this is very different from "forfeiting rights". In any case this does not appear to be from the Adsense TOS. The equivalent section there is:

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