Your International Attendees Are Searching in Their Language — Can Your Event Handle It?
When 40% of your search queries come in a language your content doesn't support, you're ignoring 40% of your audience.
At an industrial trade show in Frankfurt, the organiser assumed most attendees would search in English. The event page was in English, the exhibitor profiles were in English, and the marketing was in English. Then they turned on the language analytics.
38% of queries were in German. 11% were in Arabic. The remaining 51% were in English. Nearly half their audience was being underserved by English-only content.
What happens when language isn't supported
When an attendee types a query in German and the search index only has English content, one of two things happens: the search engine tries to cope and returns poor-quality results, or it returns nothing. Either way, the attendee's experience is worse than it should be.
Some attendees will switch to English and try again. But many won't — especially those who aren't comfortable in English. They'll give up, wander the halls, or ask a staff member. The information was there; it just wasn't in their language.
How multilingual search works
Proper multilingual search does two things: it understands queries in multiple languages, and it matches them against content in any supported language. An attendee who types "Kaffeemaschinen" in German should find the exhibitor who listed "coffee machines" in English. No translation needed from the attendee — the search handles it.
This requires exhibitor content to be either multi-language or enriched with cross-language keywords. The AI enrichment layer can add these automatically — tag a profile with its German, English, and Arabic equivalents based on the product category.
What to do with language data
The language distribution in your search analytics tells you exactly where to invest next year. If German queries are growing year over year, it's time to encourage German-language exhibitor profiles and consider German-language marketing. If Arabic queries are significant, offering RTL search support and Arabic descriptions signals to that audience that they're welcome and considered.
Language isn't just a feature. It's a hospitality decision.
Related
Stay updated on Boarda
Get the latest news, features, and tips delivered to your inbox.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.