I'm three minutes from Toledo Cathedral and tourists can't find me on Google

I've had the restaurant for twenty years. It's called Mesón del Alfiler and it's on Calle Alfileritos, which if you don't know Toledo might sound like a joke but it's a real street and it's literally three minutes' walk from the Cathedral. Meat in sauce, stewed partridge, manchegan migas, that kind of cooking.

We've always lived off two types of customer: the lifelong Toledan who comes for special occasions, and the tourist who walks in because they're passing by. That second type was slipping away from me.

My daughter Lucía, who studies Tourism in Madrid, came at Easter and was looking at her phone while waiting for her brother to arrive. Suddenly she says: "Dad, if I were a tourist and searched 'restaurant near Toledo Cathedral' or 'traditional food Toledo', you don't show up." I stared at her. I told her I had Google. She said: "Yes, but your reviews are almost all in Spanish."

It took me a while to process. Do reviews have a language? Turns out they do. When someone searches in English, Google prioritises businesses with English reviews because it assumes they're more relevant for English speakers. And I had 94 reviews, almost all in Spanish.

The foreign tourists who came to the restaurant were happy, I know because they told me and because they tipped generously, which isn't so common in Spain. But they didn't leave a review because nobody asked them to.

I started asking foreign customers for reviews too. With a system that detects they've responded to the WhatsApp in English, French or German and sends them the review request in that same language. Not in Spanish, in their language.

In four months I received 31 reviews in English, 8 in French, 4 in German and 2 in Italian. Total new reviews: 47. And the tone of the English reviews is particularly detailed: "best perdiz I've had in Spain", "hidden gem three minutes from Toledo Cathedral", "don't miss the migas".

That last phrase, "hidden gem three minutes from Toledo Cathedral", was written by a lady from Bristol. It's now the review that has brought me the most direct customers: at least eight people have told me they read it before coming.

I've been making the same food for twenty years. I just had to learn to let the world know about it in its own language.