How to get found by customers searching in English
Visitors and foreign residents search in English, and a site that only speaks Spanish doesn’t show up. The few pages, setup choices and listing details that get you found.
November 12, 2026Last updated November 12, 2026
“Best brunch near me.” “English speaking dentist.” “Yoga class in English.” These searches get typed every day on phones set to English, by people who live in Mexico City, are visiting or are in town for work. Often the perfect place is two blocks away and doesn’t show up, because everything it says about itself is in Spanish.
Translating your whole site with a button is a separate topic, which we covered in a bilingual site is not a translated site. This one is about something more basic: being found. The businesses and people in this article are made up, except one near the end, which is a project of ours.
People search with the words they use
If someone searches “English speaking dentist” and your site only says “consultorio dental,” your site doesn’t have those words. Google tries to show people the version of a page in their language, and for that your site needs to have that version. Its guide for multilingual sites explains how to tell Google which page matches each language.
There’s a detail that surprises a lot of people. Google says it uses the visible content of your page to determine its language, and that it doesn’t use language information in the code or the URL. So a hidden tag that says “English” won’t do much if the text on the screen is still in Spanish.
It doesn’t help either when the English lives inside an image. A “We speak English” sign in a photo looks nice, but to a search engine it’s a photo.
Start with what decides the visit
Think of Sarah, who has been living here for six months and just cracked a molar on a tamal. She searches in English, on her phone, in pain and slightly panicked. What she needs to know fits in a few lines: whether someone at the practice will understand her, whether they can see her today and roughly what it will cost.
The practice across the street has a dentist who trained in Texas and speaks perfect English. Its site doesn’t mention that anywhere. Sarah ends up in another neighborhood, at a practice that did have a page in English.
For most businesses, a few well-written pages in English are enough. These are the ones that do the most work:
- What you do, in two or three sentences, using the words a customer would use.
- The menu or services, with prices or price ranges.
- Your hours, matching your Google listing.
- How to get there, with landmarks that make sense to someone who isn’t from here.
- How to book or reach you, with a clear button.
Add one clear line saying whether English is spoken on site, because for many people that’s what decides whether they come. If only one person on the team speaks it, say that too, with their hours. It’s better for someone to arrive knowing who to ask for.
Each language gets its own page
There are several technical ways to run a site in two languages, and they don’t all help equally with being found. Google recommends using different URLs for each language version of a page, rather than switching the language of the same page with cookies or browser settings.
The same guide asks you to avoid automatic redirects based on language. If your site quietly sends anyone with an English phone to the English version, it can keep people, and search engines, from seeing all the versions. A visible language switcher works better, one that leads to the equivalent page in the other language.
Then there’s the question of who writes it. Machine translation is fine for understanding a text, but it tends to stumble on exactly what makes your business special: dish names, the house tone, phrases that sound warm in Spanish and odd in English. Ideally, someone who knows the business and writes well in English writes or reviews it. If the budget doesn’t stretch that far, have them at least review the pages on the list above.
Your Google listing talks too
People read your Business Profile description, menu photos and replies to reviews in both languages. When someone leaves you a review in English, answer in English. It’s a small detail that tells the next visitor they’ll be understood.
Replies are also a low-key way to say what your site may not say yet. “Thanks, Tom! Ana at the front desk speaks English, ask for her next time” tells anyone reading that somebody there will understand them.
If you want to dig into how reviews help you show up, we explain it in how Google reviews affect where your business shows up. And if your listing has old information, start with what to do when your Google Maps listing is wrong.
Your menu as text, in both languages
A menu in a photo can’t be searched or translated well. A menu in text, in Spanish and English, can. That’s what we did for Masa Viva, a café and sandwich shop: the full menu lives on its site in both languages, with prices and markers for spicy dishes and nuts.
That menu is also published as structured data, so search engines and AI bots can read each dish and its price. To a search engine or an AI bot, that’s text it can read, instead of a photo of a menu it has to guess at.
The spicy and nut markers look like a small detail, but for someone who doesn’t read Spanish they’re what makes ordering feel safe. For menus in general, we have an article with more ideas: how to put your restaurant menu on your website.
How to check whether people find you in English
You don’t need special tools to get a rough idea. One afternoon, with your phone, you can run a fairly honest test:
- Switch your phone’s language to English for a while.
- Search the way a customer would, without your name: “brunch near me,” “dentist that speaks English.”
- Open the top results and note what they have that you don’t.
- Then search for your business by name and tap “Website” on your listing, to see which page someone who doesn’t read Spanish lands on.
That last step is usually the most revealing. Some businesses do have a page in English, but nobody finds it, because the listing points to the Spanish homepage and the language switcher is hidden in the footer.
Your foreign customers also recommend you to each other. In neighborhood groups and groups for newcomers, someone asks for a good dentist or a breakfast spot, and someone else pastes a link. If that link only opens in Spanish, the person who asked has to trust it blindly or keep looking.
Common mistakes when adding English
When a business adds English in a hurry, the same problems tend to show up. Check whether your site has any of them:
- Only the homepage is in English, and everything else goes back to Spanish on the first click.
- The English page has no prices, even though the Spanish one does.
- Buttons, forms and error messages are still in Spanish.
- A dish name was translated word for word and now sounds like something else.
- The language switcher is a tiny flag hidden in the footer.
The dish names have their funny side, until it’s your menu. Often the best move is to keep the name in Spanish and explain in one line what it is.
What to ask whoever builds your site
If you’re asking for an English version, these questions help you know whether it will actually get you found. Ask them before you approve a quote:
- Will each English page have its own address?
- Who writes or reviews the English text?
- Does the language switcher lead to the equivalent page?
- Can I change prices and hours in both languages without asking for help?
- How will you tell Google which page matches each language?
If you’d like us to check how someone searching in English finds you, on their phone and two blocks from your door, book a 30-minute call.
