Google’s John Mueller was asked in a Google+ hangout a couple days ago about the sometimes poor handling of Google understanding non-English languages, specifically by looking at the synonyms Google returns in Google Webmaster Tools but also based on the search results displayed in non-English versions of Google search.

John said that they are actively working right now on trying to understand all languages better and they want examples of when they fail at it.

It seems like Google has devoted a team to improving search quality outside of English based languages. My fear is this is around improving the Panda algorithm outside of the English language and into other languages. But that can also be a very good thing for search quality. 😉

In any event, if you see examples of Google simply getting the query wrong or issues with Webmaster Tools, Google and John want to know.

John said this at the 55:20 minute mark in the video hangout:

Here is the video response:

Forum discussion at Google+.