Multilingual LLMO: checking language, pricing and availability beyond translation

You have translated your website into English, yet inquiries from overseas have not increased. An AI assistant can describe the service in English, but it gives the wrong eligible countries or price. Investigating this situation requires more than proofreading the translation: check who the page is for and under what conditions they can sign up.

LLMO involves checking how generative AI presents your information and improving the content and website behind it. For an international audience, completing a translation is different from giving a prospective customer enough information to make a decision.

Start with one Japanese–English pair of service pages. This guide takes you through availability, URLs, AI answers, and ongoing ownership. Google-specific technical guidance comes from its documentation and should not be treated as a specification shared by every AI service. The worksheets and business examples are editorial exercises using an imaginary service.

Define the country and reader before translating for LLMO

Write down the target country, reader, and eligibility before translating. “International customers” is too broad to determine the billing currency or support hours.

A service sold to the Japanese office of a foreign business requires a different explanation from one sold to businesses with no Japanese office. Not everyone who reads English lives in the United States.

Initial decision	Fictional example
Reader	An English-speaking administrator at a business with an office in Japan
Decision to make	Whether the service can manage inquiries at that Japanese office
Eligible customer	A company incorporated in Japan; direct contracts with overseas corporations are not supported
Activities available in English	Reading service information, making an inquiry, and consulting by email
Next step	Send the office location and intended use through the English consultation form

Confirm this sheet with sales and support before deciding what the page will say. A translator who guesses the service's availability can produce fluent English that misrepresents the business.

Separate English-language support from international availability

Availability in English and eligibility to contract from any country are separate conditions. Check the interface, inquiries, contract documents, and onboarding support individually.

Suppose the imaginary service has a Japanese-only interface but accepts sales inquiries in English. “English support” does not explain that distinction. Saying that sales inquiries are accepted in English while the interface is Japanese gives the eventual operator useful information.

Apply the same distinction when reviewing an AI answer. Beyond checking whether your brand appears, look for an incorrect claim that businesses in any country can sign up. Being included as a candidate under the wrong conditions does not necessarily produce a qualified inquiry.

Collect questions from each market without stereotyping it

Look for information customers need in real inquiries and sales conversations. Record the questions that affected their decisions rather than assigning assumptions to a nationality.

Remove customer names and other personal information from working notes. Extract questions such as the invoice currency, whether consultations are available during the customer's business hours, and whether a Japanese office can contract separately. Attach the URL that currently answers each question.

If you do not yet have international customers, separate anticipated questions from questions actually received. An FAQ based on your planning does not need to be described as frequently asked by overseas customers. Update it when conversations provide evidence.

Align pricing and eligibility across international pages

Compare prices, eligible regions, support hours, and the process after an inquiry for the same service in both languages. Reading the Japanese price list and English introduction separately makes omissions harder to spot.

The following worksheet uses a fictional service. Place your approved terms on the left and check that the English page preserves their meaning.

Approved fictional condition	What to check on the English page
JPY 3,000 per month on an annual contract	The monthly price and annual-billing condition appear together
Companies incorporated in Japan are eligible	The English explanation does not expand eligibility
Weekdays, 10:00–18:00 Japan time	The time zone and holiday basis are understandable
A quotation follows consultation	Sending the form is not described as starting the service

Keep relevant conditions near the signup control as well as in the price table. The aim is to reduce situations where a reader discovers that they are ineligible only after making an inquiry.

Distinguish billing currency, estimates, and time zones

Separate the currency actually charged from a conversion offered for convenience. Describing a yen-denominated service in dollars does not make dollar payment available.

For the fictional service, the central price statement could be “JPY 3,000 per month, billed annually.” If you add a converted estimate, state its rate and date and make clear that it is illustrative. There is no need to maintain additional converted prices if you cannot keep them current.

Hours also need context. “10:00–18:00” alone does not identify when someone overseas can contact you. “10:00–18:00 JST (UTC+9)” provides a basis for comparison; add the Japanese holiday condition if that is when the service closes.

Preserve the conditions while making the translation natural

Review fluent wording and preservation of commercial conditions separately. A shorter sentence may lose an eligible audience or an exclusion even when it reads well.

For example, translating “For companies incorporated in Japan; consult us before use at overseas offices” as “Available worldwide” expands the offer. An appropriate explanatory version would be: “Available to companies incorporated in Japan. Contact us before use at an overseas office.” Both the audience and consultation condition remain.

Ask the reviewer to explain what a customer would believe they could do after reading the English. Comparing that expectation with the actual offer can reveal discrepancies that a literal translation check misses. Maintain a terminology list for feature names so that the sales page and interface do not appear to describe different products.

Check multilingual URLs and navigation

Check that readers can open a language version directly and switch to its equivalent page. Google recommends separate URLs for language versions and links that let visitors choose their language.[1]

Export or copy the Japanese and English URLs for your service and pricing pages from the CMS. If the Japanese service introduction links only to the English home page, consider linking to the corresponding service introduction instead.

Page purpose	Example Japanese URL	Example English URL
Service introduction	https://example.com/ja/service	https://example.com/en/service
Pricing	https://example.com/ja/pricing	https://example.com/en/pricing

These are explanatory URLs. Replace them with real pages and compare the content, not merely the page labels.

Check direct language URLs and switching links

Paste the English URL into a new browser tab and check that the English body opens immediately. If English appears only after clicking a translation button, while sharing the URL returns a reader to Japanese, report that behavior to the developer.

Google explains that automatic redirects based on browser settings or an assumed language can prevent it from finding every version. Translating navigation while leaving the main text in Japanese is also different from publishing an English body.[1]

On desktop and mobile, follow the language switch, pricing link, and consultation form. You do not need to submit an inquiry. Record anything that obstructs the intended task, such as instructions reverting to Japanese or an address field that cannot accept the target customer's address format.

Give hreflang and canonical their separate roles

hreflang identifies corresponding language or regional versions. canonical identifies a preferred URL among duplicate or similar pages. Do not treat translation as a reason to consolidate every language into the Japanese URL.[2][3]

The following illustrative HTML is for one translated Japanese–English pair. It belongs in the template or settings that manage the page's head, not in the article-body editor.

<!-- Japanese page: https://example.com/ja/service -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/ja/service">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://example.com/ja/service">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/service">

<!-- English page: https://example.com/en/service -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/en/service">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://example.com/ja/service">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/service">

Use the three lines for the corresponding page; do not paste both groups into one page. Substitute your actual URLs and ask the developer to check for duplicate settings. Google's guidance calls for fully qualified URLs, self-reference, and reciprocal language references.[2]

Inspect both pages' HTML after publication. This is an example based on documented syntax, not a verified installation in your CMS. A site with regional English variants needs checks appropriate to that additional structure.

Review LLMO results separately by language

After correcting the pages, record what the AI says and in which language. The purpose includes checking countries, prices, and conditions—not only whether the brand appears.

Keep the AI service, timestamp, question, answer, cited URLs, and incorrect conditions in a working sheet. Record login status and any language or region settings available in the service. Setting controls vary; do not assume that an unavailable control exists or that all services can be configured identically.

Item	Record
AI answer	Brand, eligibility, price, and factual accuracy
Sources	Language and URL of each cited page
Website visit	Landing page and whether a referrer was available
Inquiry	Whether the request fits the service and whether it reveals a misunderstanding

This worksheet is an editorial proposal for organizing observations. Google does not guarantee inclusion in its AI features, and special structured data is not a prerequisite for appearing in them.[4]

Pair questions that have the same purpose

For a Japanese–English comparison, hold the target country and use conditions constant as well as the question's meaning. Changing the language and customer eligibility together makes differences harder to interpret.

The following prompts concern the imaginary service. Replace its name with the real name, use a new conversation in the same AI service for each question, and save the answers.

日本法人が日本拠点で「サンプル窓口」を使う場合、契約条件、請求通貨、英語で相談できる範囲を、根拠となるページと一緒に教えてください。

For a company incorporated in Japan using “Sample Desk” at its Japanese office, what are the eligibility requirements, billing currency, and scope of English-language support? Please include source pages.

These prompts check explanations for someone who already knows the brand. Use separate non-branded questions to investigate discovery by new customers. Our guide to designing an AI measurement question set explains that process in more detail.

Do not treat one answer as a market-wide result

One correct answer establishes what you observed for that question at that time. It does not establish that every user in the target country receives the same answer.

For repeated checks, preserve the wording and conditions and retain each answer. Separate an AI error from incorrect information still present on your pages. If the cited source is an older document, revising only the current service page may leave the source of the misunderstanding unresolved.

AI mentions, visits, and inquiries are also separate measures. Combine these observations with the GA4 guide to AI referrals when examining visits. Do not assign visits with missing referrers to AI without evidence.

Keep Japanese and English versions up to date

Maintain the translated page together with the underlying service conditions after publication. Changing only the Japanese price or support hours leaves conflicting descriptions of one service.

Record which condition changed, rather than only marking the page complete. Use actual names, dates, and findings in the following worksheet.

Changed item	Japanese version	English version	Follow-up
Annual-contract price	URL and publication date	URL and publication date	Check quotation materials too
English consultation hours	URL and reviewer	URL and reviewer	Check the form's automatic reply
Eligible regions	URL and publication date	URL and publication date	Compare the FAQ and signup instructions

Separating translation completion from the date of checking the published page helps reveal deployment omissions. Changing an article date alone is not a review of its commercial conditions.

Apply service changes to both languages

Start with the approved price or service decision, not with a translated draft. Use the conditions confirmed by sales or the service owner as the basis for revisions in both languages.

1. Record the changed condition and effective date in the approved source material.
2. Find every location that describes it, including service pages, pricing, FAQs, and forms.
3. Revise both languages and compare the audience and exclusions.
4. Inspect published headings, prices, notes, links, and text inside images.
5. Separately record when AI answers were checked again and which discrepancies remain.

If an AI answer does not change immediately, repeatedly rewriting an already-correct page is not necessarily useful. First check which source the answer uses. The AI content publishing checklist can support the broader review before a page goes live.

Begin with one pair of service pages

Choose a pair that prospective customers consult before making an inquiry. Before translating additional pages, check whether someone can move from that pair to the right price and consultation route.

For an initial working session, write down the reader and eligibility, place the language URLs side by side, and inspect AI answers to paired questions. Record concrete changes such as adding the annual-billing condition or explaining that overseas corporations are ineligible, instead of only recording “translation complete.”

LLMO does not require expanding the description to countries or features you do not serve. Start with information that lets the intended customer judge whether the service fits and proceed to a relevant conversation.