The trick
Google Chrome is currently available in 55 languages. Browser extensions can choose to support any subset of these languages, even though most of them support exactly one. Not only the extension’s user interface can be translated, its name and short description can be made available in multiple languages as well. Chrome Web Store considers such translations according to the user’s selected language. Chrome Web Store also has an extensive description field which isn’t contained within the extension but can be translated.
Apparently, some extension authors figured out that the Chrome Web Store search index is shared across all languages. If you wanted to show up in the search when people look for your competitors for example, you could add their names to your extension’s description – but that might come across as spammy. So what you do instead is sacrificing some of the “less popular” languages and stuff the descriptions there full of relevant keywords. And then your extension starts showing up for these keywords even when they are entered in the English version of the Chrome Web Store. After all, who cares about Swahili other than maybe five million native speakers?
