When you specify language as a dimension type for a search configuration folder, the assets in that folder, regardless of whether they are search configurations or search configuration folders, must specify a language that ensures that only the site visitors for whom that language is appropriate access that resource. See Detecting a Visitor’s Language to learn how ATG determines the language appropriate for each visitor.
Every search configuration uses language to restrict the site visitors to whom it applies. This is also true for those search configurations that aren’t part of a tree that uses language as a dimension. Here’s how ATG finds the language for each search configuration that it uses as a restriction:
First, ATG checks the search configuration for a language specified as a dimension value for the search configuration itself or a parent search configuration folder.
If no language is specified in this way, ATG uses the language assigned to its base search configuration, if one exists. In order to associate a base search configuration with a search configuration, the configurations need not have identical languages (a base search configuration might accept any language, for example, or a search configuration might not have an explicit language), but they must not be conflicting.
If there isn’t an associated base search configuration or if the base search configuration’s language is set to Any (not language specific), ATG uses the default language specified by your site administrator. If no default language is specified, the search engine’s default language is used. See Configuring Language Support for more information.
One consequence to having an implicit language for each search configuration is that users may define rules without realizing how the implicit language influences their outcome. For example, a positioning rule that moves a set of products to the top of the results when a user searches on “Size Medium” is applied only when the language is English, because this term won’t locate any results using the French dictionary. If language isn’t a dimension in the search configuration, users may not think to create rules with words for each language their site supports.
