Georgian or Latin letters? How Georgians search on Google

Imagine: the new site is built, every page is written in beautiful Georgian, the headings carefully chosen. Meanwhile your potential customer types into their phone: “kbilis eqimi vake”. Or “stomatologia saburtalo”. Or simply in Russian.

This isn't a rare case. In Georgia people often search for the same thing in three different forms: in the Georgian alphabet, in Latin letters and, in some fields, in Russian. When working on SEO we have to account for all three.

Why Georgians type in Latin letters

There are many reasons, and all of them are very human. Some people don't have a Georgian keyboard on their phone at all. For others typing in Latin letters is a habit of many years, from the time when Georgian fonts didn't work everywhere. And some are just in a hurry and use whichever keyboard comes up first.

The result is the same: one query is written in different ways: “saxli qiravdeba”, “sakhli kiravdeba”, “სახლი ქირავდება”. Not everyone follows the same transliteration rule either: for some “ყ” is “y”, for others “q”, and for others “k”.

How to find out how your customers search for you

Data beats guessing. These four sources are free and give you more than enough information:

• Google Search Console: the “Performance” section shows the real queries people already use to find your site. This is often where Latin variants show up that you never even thought of.
• Google Ads Keyword Planner: shows roughly how often each phrase is searched. Compare the Georgian and Latin versions with each other.
• Google autocomplete: start typing in the search box and see what it suggests. These are real, frequent queries.
• Your customers: look through the messages you get on Messenger and by email. Which alphabet do they write in? Most likely they search on Google the same way.

What to do on the site

Moderation is key here. Text stuffed with Latin phrases looks unprofessional and costs the visitor's trust. This is how we handle it:

• Main content in clean Georgian. People read the site, and the text should be written for them.
• The brand name in both alphabets. If your business is called, say, “ოქროს ფურნე”, then “Oqros Purne” should naturally appear somewhere too: in the footer, on the contact page or in your Google Business Profile.
• A FAQ block. A FAQ is a natural place for different phrasings, exactly the way people really talk.
• Checking the results. A few weeks after the change, check Search Console for new queries. SEO is a constant experiment, not a one-off decision.

We write the text for people and the structure for Google. When the two conflict, people win.

Russian and English

In some fields (real estate, tourism, hotels, medical services) people actively search in other languages besides Georgian. In that case separate language versions beat mixing languages on one page: each gets its own URL, its own text and a correctly set hreflang tag, so Google knows which version to show to whom.

A short checklist

• Check Search Console for the queries people already use to find you.
• Write down 10–15 main phrases in Georgian, in Latin letters and, if needed, in Russian.
• Keep the main text in clean Georgian.
• Place the brand name in both alphabets where it looks natural.
• Check the results again in a month.

If you're not sure which queries bring your business customers, write to us and we'll go through your Search Console data together.