Searching with Diacritics and Accents on Google

From the Official Google Webmaster Central blog come this post on How search results may differ based on accented characters and interface languages. This highlights a change in the way Google handles diacritics and gives a good overview of how it still varies depending on the search interface language chosen.

Basically, a search on a word that might have accented characters (and presumably other diacritic markings as well), Google finds pages containing the word either with or without the accent. The post uses the example of méxico versus mexico and says that they should get the same results. It used to be that méxico would only match on the a page that had the word with the diacritic. Sometime it seems to work like they describe, but on other searches I found some discrepancies. For another similar term to try, use eléphant versus elephant. Putting a plus in front of the term is supposed to force Google to exactly match the characters.

The post also notes that the results can vary when users choose a different default interface language or if their IP address identifies them as being located in a non-English speaking country. Pandia has further commentary.