Location, language and the dictionary problem

What the document says

Distance is relative to the type of business (22.0). For visit-in-person queries without an explicit location, results near the user are most helpful — but “nearby” varies: nobody travels far for a gas station or a coffee shop; people go farther for a doctor, a library, a specific kind of restaurant; farther still for a highly specialized clinic. The [ralphs] example: supermarkets 60 miles away “are too far to be helpful.” Location changes nothing when the query isn’t local ([amazon jobs] from Miami: Amazon’s careers page is FullyM wherever the user is) — and changes everything when information is regionalized ([minimum wage rate] in Kansas: California’s official page is unhelpful).

English in non-English locales (23.0). The whole section addresses raters outside the anglophone world. The rule: “we know that you can read English (you are reading this document!), but you should only give high Needs Met ratings to English results if users in your locale would expect or want them for a particular query.” An English result most of the locale can’t read is useless (FailsM) unless explicitly requested. The examples are categorical: the English Wikipedia page on Barack Obama, “with similar content” to the Korean version, is useless to the Korean user; a query typed in Latin script ([ronaldo], [samsung tablet]) still deserves a local-language result. The exceptions are narrow: the official site of a global organization (the Hindi query for “Harvard website” is fully satisfied by the English site), technical information conventionally expressed in English (network commands inside a Korean tutorial), and locales where English is a current language (Singapore).

Dictionaries and encyclopedias (24.0). A dictionary result is topically relevant for almost anything — which is exactly why the document restricts it: high ratings only when the likely intent is “what is it?”. The definition of a word everyone knows is Slightly Meets: someone searching [rainbow] doesn’t want the definition of a rainbow; someone searching [cafeteria] wants a place to eat. But [obsequious] (a hard vocabulary word) earns the dictionary, and [history of ATM machines] earns the encyclopedia.

In practice

Section 23 is the definitive business case for Portuguese-language SEO. Google instructs raters to treat English content as useless for users who can’t read it — even when the content is equivalent to what exists locally. For the Brazilian market that means: the real competition for a Portuguese query is only what exists in Portuguese. Niches where the world’s best information lives in English are precisely the niches where a well-made native version faces a low-competition SERP with proven demand. It’s the largest content arbitrage available to anyone operating in PT-BR.

The technical exception validates hybrid content. The Korean tutorial with English commands is the right model for technical content in any language: explanation in the local language, code/commands/terms of art in the original. Translating what the community doesn’t translate (function names, error messages) hurts rather than helps.

The travel radius calibrates local strategy. A convenience business (coffee, pharmacy, gym) competes within a short radius — the neighborhood, not the city; a rare specialist competes across a long one — city, region, country. Defining your real radius defines which local queries you can win and where to invest presence (Google Business Profile, regional pages, hyperlocal content).

The dictionary lesson generalizes: topical relevance is not helpfulness. The perfect encyclopedia entry on “cafeteria” fails because it answers a question nobody asked. Before producing the “complete guide to X,” check whether the query asks for understanding or action — exhaustive educational content for a transactional query is your niche’s cafeteria entry.