Can incomplete page localizations result in a Google duplicate content penalty?

We just put out 7 translations of a few of our company’s main webpages (our site is using MODx). I’m now noticing a drop in our search engine rankings whereas before we’d generally stayed in the same spot for months (maybe years even).

The translations are incomplete -- in other words, only the main text of the webpages has been translated. The header/footer and side column stuff, as well as <title> and <alt> tags are all still in English (which I know is a rather poor implementation but I had very little say in this). I’m wondering if Google is seeing this as duplicate content and penalizing us... any thoughts?

Are you serving the localized content from the same URL’s?

No; they are several directories deep and the actual filename is slightly different.

Menu’s or any formed stuff like that don’t queue in duplicate content!, try to use site-map or meta keywords to ensure that bots/spiders don’t miss anything.

Quote from: MotSmart at Apr 18, 2008, 02:36 PM

Menu’s or any formed stuff like that don’t queue in duplicate content!, try to use site-map or meta keywords to ensure that bots/spiders don’t miss anything.

Well maybe that’s the issue. All of the meta stuff is exactly the same for all localizations.

Take care of meta stuffs relative with their content language and you’ll get the desired rank soon enough.