Useful Arabic web search finally tips up

IT'S GOOD NEWS FOR the Arabic Web, with Arab start-up Yamli.com announcing it has finally come up with a search engine to let users search Arabic content in a variety of forms.

Those familiar with Arabic know how frustrating it can be to search for specific content, mainly because much Arabic content online is typed in transliterated form, spelled phonetically using Latin characters and not a hint of any universally-agreed spelling.

But Yamli reckons it can help, by automatically expanding Arabic keyword searches to encompass all transliterated variations and returning results for both Arabic and transliterated content.

Yamli's co-founder Habib Haddad noted, "The challenge with Arabic content is that it's hard to reach all of it", pointing out, for instance, that a simple search for popular Egyptian singer 'Umm Khulthum' could be tricky business seeing as her name could be spelt in about 90 different ways.

The new search engine has apparently also been optimised for slower connections and uses APIs from search engines such as Google, Microsoft Live Search and Youtube as well as integrating a 'Smart Arabic keyboard' to let users type Arabic without actually having to own an Arabic keyboard.

Feel like trying your hand at some Arabic wibbling? You can try Yamli Search for yourself here. µ