Seekport and Integrated Technical Solutions plan Arabic Internet search engine

Internet Business News, April 26, 2006

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A dedicated Arabic language Internet search engine is planned by German Internet technology company Seekport and Saudi partner Integrated Technical Solutions.

The 'Sawafi' project, registered in Dubai, is expected to be introduced in the last quarter this year, challenging search engine companies such as Google and Yahoo, which currently provide a basic Arabic search facility.

Seekport said the Arabic search engines currently available provide a directory search rather than a local search and claimed there is no full Arabic Internet search engine available at present.

Sawafi will provide a search engine for the 280m people in the Arab world, where there is currently low Internet penetration, and for Europe and North America's expatriate Arab communities.

There are 100m Arabic web pages, representing 0.2% of the global total, but Seekport said that without a system to find the content there is no reason for extra Arabic content to be made available online.

According to Madar, an Internet researcher based in Dubai, 65% of Arab Internet users in 2005 were not able to read English, which represents 70% of Internet material. It claimed the number of Arabic Internet users could increase from 16m in 2004, to 43m in 2008.

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