Academy › Publish › Get found on Google
How do you know if the English version is bringing you anything
Decide whether to keep, expand, or take down the English version based on where your visitors are coming from and the real contacts it brings in, not just the feeling of having a complete website.
By Yodai · Published September 6, 2026 · Updated October 13, 2026
You've had the English version up for months. No one's complained, the site loads fine, the language switcher is right where it should be. And yet you still don't know if it's doing anything for you, or if it's just something you keep around just in case, because one day you decided you needed it.
The question isn't whether you like having a "complete" website. It's whether someone from outside has messaged you, booked, or bought something that wouldn't have happened without that version. You can't just guess at this. You check it in two places, and you check after some time has passed, not on day two.
Country before language
The first of those two tools is Search Console, and it only helps if your site runs on its own domain and Google has already indexed your English pages: it counts what comes in from Google's search results, so a page that isn't on Google yet won't show anything. Open its Performance report and filter for pages starting with /en/, or your English subdomain if that's how you set it up. Now open the Countries tab. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one that decides everything else. What you see there are clicks from Google's search results, and by default the Performance report shows the last three months. The Countries tab breaks them down by the country the search came from, according to Search Console help.
A visit from your home country to your English page isn't worth the same as a visit from the UK. It could be a tourist who searched for you while visiting with their browser set to English, or a local who has their phone set to English and hasn't even noticed they're reading the translated version. Google can show either one the English version, since it picks based on the searcher's browser settings, as explained in its guide on localized versions. Neither case tells you whether an outside market has actually found you.
What counts is traffic coming from outside your home country, searching in English, and landing on your English pages. If you strip out your home country's row and almost nothing is left, you don't have a signal to decide anything yet. You need to wait.
Notice that all three rows need to point in the same direction for the decision to be clear. Traffic that's rising with zero contacts isn't "expand": it's a half signal, and half signals call for figuring out why it's not converting before you spend on more pages.
reviews in a shopper's own language carry weight: in the survey published by CSA Research in 2020, covering 8,709 consumers across 29 countries, 73% wanted at least the reviews in their own language, and with the price shown in their own currency too, a visitor doesn't have to do the math
This changes the decision completely. It's not about taking down the English version because "English doesn't work." It's about going back to the pricing page and the review you chose to translate, and checking whether they really speak the language of the person visiting you, or whether you just swapped the words and left everything else the same.
Only once that page already says what it needs to say and still brings in nothing does the problem become something else: maybe that particular product just doesn't interest people abroad, or maybe language was never the real barrier and the whole business needs adjusting before it can think about going international.
- 1Count the clicks from outside
Search Console, English pages, Countries tab: every row except your home country, over the last three months. - 2Track what actually happened
How many WhatsApp messages, form submissions, or bookings can you trace back to someone who found you through the English version? If your contact form doesn't ask where people are writing from, add a field or a question before your next review. If your website doesn't let you add it, ask whoever manages your site to add it for you, or just ask the customer when they reach out. - 3Put a price on maintaining it
How long it takes you to translate every price change, every new photo, every notice. If that time outweighs what the English version has brought you, it counts against keeping it, even if the traffic is there. - 4Decide and act that same week
If you're keeping it, don't touch anything else. If you're expanding, add the page that got the most outside traffic among the ones you already have in Spanish. If you're pulling it, don't delete the pages: make every English page redirect to the matching Spanish page, not all of them to the homepage (if you can't do this yourself, ask whoever manages your site), so you don't suddenly lose what Google had already indexed about you.
That last point matters more than it seems. Pulling a page isn't the same as switching it off all at once. A permanent redirect takes the visitor, and Google, from the old address to the new one, and over time Google can carry over all the old page's signals to the new one, including links other sites had pointed at you, according to its guide on moving a site. The same guide recommends keeping redirects in place for at least a year and not sending too many unrelated addresses to a single destination, like the homepage: it can confuse visitors, and Google may read it as an error, something it calls a soft 404. Deleting without redirecting throws three months of indexing work in the trash, and on top of that leaves broken links if anyone outside had linked to you.
And if the decision is to keep it, keeping it means exactly that: don't let it fossilize while your Spanish site keeps changing prices and photos. An English version that's been frozen since March while the one here keeps evolving through September stops being a website and turns into an old sign in a storefront window that no longer matches what's inside.
- You know to check the country in Search Console, not just the page's language, before drawing any conclusions
- You know what counts as a real contact from the English version, and that if your form doesn't ask, you need to fix that first
- You have a clear way to decide whether to keep, expand, or take it down, by crossing traffic, contacts, and cost, not just one of those three signals on its own
- If you take it down, you know to redirect it, not delete it
Test yourself
Answer before opening each one. If one gives you trouble, go back to the section that explains it.
1. Your English version gets 40 visits a month, almost all from the US. You want to know if it's doing any good.
Those visits aren't the signal you're looking for: they could be locals with their phone set to English, or tourists searching for you while they're visiting. In the Countries tab, strip out your home country's row. If barely any traffic is left, you still don't have evidence to either keep it or pull it: you need to wait, not decide.
2. You've been at it for three months and traffic from the UK keeps climbing every month, but not a single message has come in. The price on those pages is still listed only in euros.
Don't take it down. The traffic signal is working fine, it's the price and trust signal that's failing, not the language one. Go back to the pricing page, add pounds alongside euros, add the English-language review, and give it another quarter before you touch anything else.
3. You published the English version five weeks ago, confirmed it was indexed two weeks ago, and since it hasn't brought in anything, you want to take it down already.
It's too soon. The clock starts when you confirmed indexing, not when you published, and you need a full three months, not two weeks. Pulling it now means judging with data that doesn't exist yet.
Sources
- Search results "Performance" report: introduction and basic setup. Search Console Help (Google), accessed October 2026.
- Search results "Performance" report: data dimensions and groupings. Search Console Help (Google), accessed October 2026.
- Telling Google about localized versions of your page. Google Search Central, updated September 23, 2026.
- How to move your site. Google Search Central, updated September 11, 2026.
- SEO starter guide. Google Search Central, updated December 18, 2025.
- Consumers Prefer their Own Language. CSA Research, July 7, 2020.