For any company doing business in Arabic-speaking countries or communities a good feed to have is for the Maktoob Business Blog.
Online since December 2005, the blog covers aspects of business in the Middle East, with a stated aim of focusing on marketing, advertising and media. There are several contributors.
The blog is a product of Maktoob Business – whose website banner claims that the group has the world’s largest Arabic community.
A recent blog post reports on Maktoob’s newly-launched (beta) Arabic search engine, Araby.com, which Maktoob claims has a number of competitive advantages over the Arabic version of the engines developed first for English:
- optimized to deliver Arabic-language results from Arabic sources
- specialized search channels including Arabic news sites, photos, blogs and forums
- a dedicated channel for searching Islamic topics
The press release here provides more detail and some pr elaboration.
Not being able to read Arabic, for me the Araby.com site is a closed book. But could Araby.com be a serious Arabic competitor to Google and Yahoo! A contender in its rather large niche? This blog post by one of the developers, Isam Bayazidi, sounds a cautionary note – it’s beta, he’s saying:
One thing for sure, Araby.com, and the verticals in it have a long way to go with development. We only released early to give users a peak into what is cooking, and get feedback on it.
Thank you for your blog post about Araby. Araby is indeed something that is unique, being provided from Maktoob, it did indeed deliver verticals, and cutomizations that are designed for Arab internet users, and their needs and requirements. Add to that, that it is build over one of the finest engines available, by FAST (http://fast.no). Although my opinion might be biased, I can tell you that Araby’s offering is something that had been missing for years..
Thanks again
Comment by Isam Bayazidi — September 23, 2006 @ 3:03 am