While I’m yet to read conclusive evidence to say that URL localisation helps increase SEO traffic for Cyrillic languages. It would seem logical to me that Cyrillic languages just like any other non-Roman alphabet languages would benefit from URLs encoded in the users native language.

Why?
The URL is an important factor in ranking a page in search engines and if the URL doesn’t contain any keywords relevant to the users search then it is going to be of use.

Plus from a consumer’s perspective a URL is a helpful signpost to where they are an what they are looking at, keeping this native to the users language is therefore important.

My only concern is the number of browsers that actually encode the URL, as from a consumers perspective this isn’t helpful and can be a little ugly. I’m trying to get do some QA research on browser support for UTF-8 and localised URLs and will post to my blog when complete to help with this.

Thanks,
James

I wanted to know your thoughts on the Cyrillic langauge URLs, it was suggested to me to translate using the Roman Alphabet.

Do you have any thoughts on this.

Thanks
lesley