If you manage a multilingual content site and you’ve seen organic traffic from countries like India, Turkey, or Indonesia start to vanish, you’re not alone. Something is quietly happening in international SEO, and it’s not coming from your competitors.
It’s coming from Google itself.
Since 2024, Google’s translate.google.com domain has seen a meteoric rise in organic traffic, often by serving auto-translated versions of your content under its own subdomain. These translated versions show up in Google Search, outranking your own site, and you get no credit.
Let’s break down what’s happening, how it affects your SEO performance, and most importantly how to protect your site from this growing issue.
What Are Translate-Proxy Pages?
Translate-proxy pages are dynamically generated versions of your web pages, hosted by Google under the translate.goog domain. When users search in their native language, instead of surfacing your original site, Google might serve the translated version on its own domain.
For examples:
- https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=tr&sl=en&u=https://yourdomain.com
- https://www-your-site-com.translate.goog/path?hl=es&sl=en
This may seem convenient, but there’s a big problem.
The SEO Risk
- These pages can be indexed in search results.
- They do not pass authority or link equity back to your domain.
- They disrupt hreflang signals, even if you’ve implemented them properly.
- And worst of all, Google becomes the canonical source in the eyes of users and search engines.
So even if you’ve invested in localizing content or building language-specific landing pages, you may still lose traffic because Google has created a shadow version that ranks better.
How Much Organic Traffic Is Going to Google’s Auto-Translated Pages?
This issue isn’t theoretical. It’s backed by hard data.
According to recent Ahrefs insights, translate.google.com now pulls in over 206 million monthly organic visits. This is a staggering number, especially considering the traffic was under 50 million per month just a year earlier.
The graph shows a sharp traffic spike starting in Q4 2024 and peaking around mid-2025.
This means translated pages are:
- Ranking for high-value international keywords
- Stealing clicks that would otherwise go to content creators like you
- Disrupting native-language SEO strategies in multilingual regions
Why is traffic skyrocketing?
- Google’s increased reliance on machine translation in SERPs
- Users clicking “Translate this page” directly in search results
- AI-powered enhancements making translated content more discoverable
Which Countries Are Most Affected by These Auto-Translations?
The impact is especially strong in countries where:
- English is not the primary language
- Internet penetration is high
- Native-language content is in demand
Let’s look at the countries where Google Translate receives the most traffic:
| Country | Traffic | Share |
| India | 51.9M | 25.2% |
| Indonesia | 20.2M | 9.8% |
| Turkey | 14.6M | 7.1% |
| Brazil | 13.2M | 6.4% |
| Mexico | 12.5M | 6.1% |
In particular, Turkey’s 7.1% share is notable. This means that even if you’ve developed Turkish content, Google’s auto-translated English version may rank above your localized efforts.
How to Identify If Your Content Is Being Auto-Translated by Google?
Want to know if Google is hijacking your content through proxy translations?.
Check via Google Search Console (GSC):
- Go to Performance → Pages
- Use the search/filter bar
- Enter translate.google.com or check for language-based URLs
- You might see data for:
translate.google.com/translate?hl=…
Pro Tip:
Check user behavior for these translated versions. Bounce rates tend to be higher, and sessions shorter, since users think they’re browsing Google instead of your site.
What Can You Do to Prevent Traffic Loss from Translated Pages?
While you can’t stop users from manually translating pages, you can prevent these versions from ranking in search engines.
Here are the most effective strategies:
1. Use hreflang Tags Properly
Tell Google which version of your content should rank for which region and language. This helps prevent Google from defaulting to its own translated page.
Example hreflang tag:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”tr” href=”https://example.com/tr/” />
2. Block Translation Proxies via Robots Headers
You can use the x-robots-tag HTTP header to stop Google from indexing translated pages:
x-robots-tag: noindex, nofollow
This prevents proxy versions from appearing in SERPs.
3. Offer Native-Language Pages on Your Own Domain
Don’t rely on machine translation. Instead, create high-quality local versions. Use subdirectories (/tr/, /id/) or subdomains (tr.example.com), and make sure the metadata is also localized.
4. Use Canonical Tags Correctly
Set <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://yourdomain.com”> to reinforce your original page as the preferred source.
5. Monitor Logs and Analytics
Watch for unusual referral traffic from translate.google.com. If it spikes, you may be losing authority.
What Not to Do?
- Do not block Googlebot entirely. This might harm indexing.
- Do not redirect translated traffic without explanation. This creates user experience issues.
- Do not assume that hreflang alone solves the problem. It should be combined with other methods.
Note: This article includes insights from this blog post on metehan.ai, which discusses the impact of Google Translate proxy pages on search results in Europe.