Sawafi: Arabic language search engine

Sawafi: Arabic language search engine

A Saudi-German cooperative project aims to develop a dedicated Arabic language search engine named Sawafi. The project is aiming to expand the internet usage in the Arabic nations by making it easier for the web users to search for relevant content.

Sawafi is planned for launch by the end of current year and could challenge the domination of popular search engines like Google and Yahoo! in these markets. Hermann Havermann, managing director of German Internet tech firm Seekport said in a statement on their plans: “There is no (full) Arabic Internet search engine on the market. You find so-called search engines, but they involve a directory search, not a local search. There’s nothing available for overall Internet search.”

He added: “If you look at the international search engines, their functionality is non-existent. This market really lacks the support of an Arabic search engine.”

The popularity of Google on the net has shown that people tend to rely more and more on search engines to find relevant information on the internet. Sawafi follows the example of Chinese search engine Baidu.com, which dominates the world’s most popular search engine Google in China.