Five reasons to avoid using maps on your website

Robert Frost wrote that good fences make good neighbors. Yet when it comes to virtual fences, visualized as maps, I’m not sure there is any way to create “good fences.” So many regions around the world are under dispute. And …

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COVID flattened the language curve, and that’s actually good news

I began the Web Globalization Report Card back in 2003. It became the first report of it kind to benchmark global websites and I’ve been publishing this report annually ever since then. For the first time in all those years, …

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Google’s global trends 2019

For anyone interested in a truly global (and local) view of the world’s Internet users, I recommend spending a few minutes here. At a global level, it’s revealing to see that the leading search phrase was “India vs. South Africa,” …

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Airbnb doubles (yes, doubles) its linguistic reach

As I’ve documented in many editions of the Web Globalization Report Card, companies tend to add languages in fits and starts. The overall average is about one additional language per year. But some companies expand their global reach in sprints. …

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1,000 languages: The world’s most multilingual website

The Jehovah’s Witnesses announced today that its website reached 1,000 languages, an impressive achievement. The release notes: On November 4, 2019, jw.org, the official website of Jehovah’s Witnesses, reached an unprecedented translation milestone—it now includes articles, videos, and audio content available …

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