For location-based businesses, ranking highly in Google Places can be a boon to sales. This is not only true on Google.com, but also on many of the country-specific versions of Google as well. In the tourism and hospitality industries, business can use this medium to promote services to people planning trips to their location. Take for example a search for hotels in New York from various places around the world. In Mexico,

When optimizing sites in languages that contain characters not found in the English language, it is important to know that Google will return different results depending on whether the characters )called diacritical marks or diacritics( were used. For example, a search for "Rucksäcke" )the German word for backpacks( on Google.de returns different results than one for "Rucksacke" )which is technically a typo( or "Rucksaecke",

International SEO Case Study: Hotels.com While the online travel market has become highly competitive in the United States, there are numerous excellent, untapped opportunities for companies looking to expand internationally. The internet is global and with over 1.5 billion people now connected. Many of these people are in countries with a rapidly developing middle class who are spending more on travel. Hotels.com is one of the most prominent online travel companies.

There are now approximately 1.8 billion users throughout the world. They are located in many countries and speak multiple languages. Many of them could be potential customers. But how do you reach them? Not only do you have to speak their language, you have to ensure your website appears where they are searching. Website globalization can be achieved through market research, translation, localization and optimization.