In a recent interview on satellite tv covering the Media and Marketing Show Dubai 2009, someone was complaining about the lack of Arabic content on the internet.
The complaints are coming from Arabic search engines folks (and I don’t mean Google, I am talking about local SE)
Now, I’ve been hearing this song forever, same tune, same excuse, “the Arabic content on the internet is poor”. whining whining and some more whining, that’s all I read/hear from local Arabic search engines.
So, as you figured out, there are two types of companies, those who whine all day long to cover their poor performance and those who actually do something about it and don’t whine at every conference and interview possible.
There are no actual accurate scientific numbers of the Arabic digital content on the internet, but they all claim that it’s 1% – just because Google said though and not because they did their homework – and they keep on whining about it.
Anyways,
I am just gonna list what Google did as a SE to boost the Arabic content (hence getting more loyal users, making more money, getting all the publicity, take over the middle east and get all the oil…go on, ask the die hard Arabic fans, everything is evil and they all want oil, even over the internet, and for the ones with no sense of humor or sarcasm, I AM JOKING)
Google’s initiatives to boost the Arabic content on the internet (direct links to articles)
- Google sees opportunity to expand Arabic content
- Google – New tool to bring more Arabic content online
- Launching the Initiative to Enrich the Arabic Content on the Internet
- Google competition encourages Arabic content online
- Google Friend Connect Now Available In Arabic
- Google Brings Better Arabic Support To Gmail
- Google Launches Arabic Transliteration Tool, Takes On Yamli
- Google Launches Four New Arabic Editions Of Google News
- Google Launches Google.ps Domain Name For Palestine
- Google Launches The Arabic Edition of Google Sites and Four New …
- Google’s Research Awards Program
- …
Just head to Google Arabia Blog or do a quick search for the deals made between Google and Arabic universities around the middle east to see what and how Google is making the initiative to enrich the Arabic content on the net instead of just sitting and whining like the rests.
A quick message to the Arabic search engines, WAKE UP, and show us that you really are doing something to enrich the content, and not just whine about it and wanting quick dollars! (there are NO initiatives from them over the internet, just do a search, IF you find anything please do notify me so I can fix it. At the time of the writing of this post, there are NONE)
A few universities/governments are following Google’s steps, but it’s still shy (just Google it)
On a final note, I am estimating that Ayna has AROUND 1,121,382,150 indexed pages, Araby has AROUND 1,844,570,111 indexed pages (how I figured the numbers out is pretty easy, head over Araby or Ayna and have fun searching, you will notice a pattern and a fixed number…it’s not scientific though) and that’s a high number (considering the whining and their TV appearances and the non existing stats) so the problem is not just lack of content, but bad search results/algorithms.
If you know any initiatives, please do share, I’ll add a page with links to the projects/initiatives…
I got it off my chest..
