When a website adds an English, French or German version, many owners keep the same old rank tracking list and simply add a few translated keywords to it. That almost always produces wrong results: the same keyword, translated into another language, is no longer the same keyword, because users in each market type differently, search with different intent and face different competitors. Tracking rankings for a multilingual website is therefore not about translating a keyword list. It is about building a separate tracking system for each language.
Translating keywords is the first mistake when expanding into a new language
Keywords cannot be translated literally. A Vietnamese phrase translated into English can become a wording no native speaker would ever use to search, while the phrase native speakers actually use is completely different. For example, a Vietnamese user searches for a home air-conditioner repair service in Vietnamese, while an American user types "AC repair near me" rather than a word-for-word translation of the Vietnamese sentence. If you translate your keyword list and track it, you will track terms almost nobody searches for, while missing the terms that actually bring customers. The right approach is to do separate keyword research for each language, using tools that let you pick the target country and language, and reading the live results page in that market to see how people actually phrase their needs.
One tracking project per language
The simplest way to organise this is one tracking project per language, each with its own keyword list, country and devices. The Vietnamese project tracks on google.com.vn, the English project tracks on the market you serve, such as google.com for the US market. Keeping them separate lets you read each language's rankings without contamination: an English keyword dropping does not lead to a wrong verdict about the Vietnamese version, and vice versa. When the website adds a new language, you simply create a new project instead of reshuffling the whole old list. If you want guidance on organising projects by website structure, read the guides in the the Keyword.help blog of Keyword.help.
Hreflang decides who Google shows which version to
Hreflang tags tell Google which language and regional versions of a page exist, so Google can show the right version to the right searcher. If hreflang is wrong or missing, Google may show the English version to a French searcher, or worse, treat the language versions as duplicate content. That distorts ranking data too: you see a page ranking well, but traffic from the target market does not grow, because that ranking belongs to the wrong language version. Before reading ranking data deeply for a multilingual site, check hreflang: every page must reference itself, list all the other versions, use the correct language and region codes, and every URL in the hreflang set must be a real, working page. Search Console has a dedicated hreflang report for checking errors.
One page, one language: never mix languages on the same page
Google determines a page's language from the page's own content. A page that mixes two languages — an English title with a Vietnamese body, for example — makes it hard for Google to tell who the page serves, and it usually ranks poorly in both languages as a result. The hard rule is that each page uses exactly one language, including navigation, buttons and error messages. When tracking rankings, if you see a page getting impressions scattered across many countries but low clicks everywhere, suspect a language problem on the page before blaming the content. A page that is clean in language gives clean ranking data: you know for sure that the position belongs to the market the page targets.
Read Search Console per language folder
Search Console lets you filter data by page, so for a multilingual site organised by folders such as /en/ or /fr/, you can filter the performance report by each folder to see one language at a time: impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position for the English version alone, or the French version alone. You can also compare two language folders in the same report to see which version is stronger for the same topic. The countries tab in the performance report also shows whether language versions are ranking in their intended countries: a German version whose impressions mostly come from Vietnam has a hreflang or content problem. Reading each language separately like this is the only way to know whether your localisation effort is actually working.
Same topic, different intent by market
For the same topic, users in different markets may search with different intent. In one market, the main keyword carries buying intent; in another, the same concept is mostly searched for information. If you apply the same keyword set and the same expectations to every language, you will judge wrongly: a language version ranking low is not necessarily weak content — the search intent in that market may simply not match the type of page you have. When building a keyword list for each language, read the shape of the results page in that market: if the results are all guides, the intent is informational; if they are all shopping pages, the intent is to buy. Only then decide which of your pages should target that keyword.
Common mistakes in multilingual rank tracking
The most common mistake is translating the keyword list instead of researching each market from scratch. The second is tracking all languages in one shared list and reading an average number that belongs to no market at all. The third is ignoring hreflang: tracking rankings diligently while Google shows searchers the wrong language version. The fourth is comparing rankings across languages to decide to cut budget for the slower one, when different speeds of progress are perfectly normal. If you are preparing to expand your website into a new language, you can check the the pricing page to pick a tracking plan with enough keywords for each language project.
Conclusion
Tracking rankings for a multilingual website means tracking several markets at once: research keywords separately for each language instead of translating, keep one tracking project per language, get hreflang right so Google shows the correct version, keep one language per page, and read Search Console per language folder. Add patience for the different speeds at which markets progress. Done this way, your ranking data will tell you exactly which version is winning in which market, instead of one vague number that helps no decision.
