This is a great news for any Search Marketer from the Middle East region, having an alternative search marketing platform to Google. Yes, I am talking about Ayna.com.

Ayna Corporation Launched in 1997, Ayna is the pioneer of Arabic search engines. Google recently rated it as the second most used search engine in the Middle East (TBC).

Ayna means Where in Arabic. I believe Ayna have a powerful local reach inlcuding their Middle East Maps, along with their local advertising on maps and the content network of Ayna called Shareek Network also will give you a powerful local reach includes very popular and niche websites

Recent article listed in Emirates business post claims that Ayna rated as the second most used search engine in the Middle East. (CRAIG SCARR)

A recent interview with Mr.Husni Al Khuffash (UAE Country Business Development Manager for Google Inc)to Media ME talking about some of the future plans and commitments to Arab World.

Google believes the Middle East has tremendous growth potential in the online world and we are investing heavily in the region. We came to the region because we saw great potential to be able to add value here. We are investing in the region to help users to access information and enable companies to reach their target audience more effectively.

Ultimately we believe that by helping people access information, we give them more freedom more choice and ultimately more power over their lives. So our goal is to continuously work on improving and developing more products in the local languages of the markets we serve. We have already made some great headways in Arabic with the launch of products like iGoogle, Docs and Blogger and Adsense just to name a few but there is tremendous room for growth and we are excited by this challenge.

We are looking to hire Arabic engineers wherever they are to be able to better understand the needs of Arab users. We also support the region through our initiatives.

Read more on Google is investing heavily in the Middle East's potential at MediaME.com

Really great two resources for SEO's and webmasters, if you really need to peek in to Google's Latest Search Quality Secrets, Google is opening up little bit.

At the same time, from SEO perspective some great thoughts and discussions are going on in Search Engine Land. regarding the latest issues came across in the SEO world, new terms like

1. Google Personalized Search Results
2. Universal Search Results
3. Minus -60 Punishment
4. Google Crawler Rate Drop
5. Google Floating Four (My Favourite)

There are more, let me know any one came across any kind of new behaviour from Google.

Are we heading to Search 4.0?

Best,

Aj

Today, Google has announced their Google Content Network is opened for third party ad servers. Now Advertisers and agencies can use the same ad serving system they use for the online campaigns for Google Content Network. Listed below are some of certified third parties ad servers;

1. Double Click
2. Mediaplex
3. Eyeblaster
4. Point Roll
5. Unicast etc...

There are more players coming in, read more at Official Google Blog: Opening our content network to third parties

SEO is Not a Spam by Matt Cutts
Watch this ten minute video from Matt Cutts from Google on the topic "What Google know about Spam" at Web2.0 expo- San Fransisco 2008, especially Web Spam, we call it as "Black Hat" Techniques. Marketers who especially invest money in SEO, please be sure that what they do in each and every process, to make sure that you website is not been spammed by unethical SEO's.



As he mentioned, the recent attack on SQL Injection made 5000's website's down, does any one have more info about this? If yes, please share it here!

Best,
Aj

Yahoo is partnering with McAfee on a system that flags potentially unsafe search results, SearchScan(BETA) helps protect you from viruses, spammy email, and potentially damaging software by identifying websites that may harm your computer.

I was quite unsure about this and this is first kind of experience, how they going to find this from the huge database, so I decided to roll out some queries in Yahoo, SEO, Search Marketing, Dubai Realestate etc... nothing came in to the screen, then had tried some more queries like Virus, Viagra etc... No ways! then last I tried with more regional focused like "Viagra in Dubai", "Virus in Dubai"

See what happens in Yahoo search result, a very well known portal from this region is caught in Yahoo SearchScan and showed red flag, litereally it will effect the Search Engine traffic to the site. I dug more in to this, why it's showed red and found the message "In our tests, we found downloads on this site that some people consider adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs"

More detailed analysis shows that this website, is sending regular emails in short period,
McAfee says "we've been receiving an average of less than one e-mail a week, with an average SpamAssassin score of -2"

A great notice for Marketers to protect your Brand in Search Engines!

Note: This is blog is still in his test version, You can call it BETA, BETI or Whatever....!

Did you ever tried a visual search engine? I tried this engine and I had a very new experience and also it has an Apple touch on their interface.

Watch SearchMe Introduction video

Try visual search engine now at www.searchme.com, SearchMe has great 3 features;

1. Visual Search
2. Category Suggest
3. List View

Eg: I searched for "Dubai" and searchMe suggested different categories like;
1. Lodging & hotels
2. Real Estate
3. Business News
4. Work & Career
5. Weather
6. Rugby
7. Stocks
8. Flights

When I clicked on Rugby, and one of the leading website in Dubai came up and it has nothing to do with "Rugby in Dubai". :(

Still, they have a very good system and look at what SearchMe guys has to say
"We’re just getting started on our first step towards creating an entirely new way to search the Web. The quality of our results will vary as we make Searchme better and better"

Best of Luck guys!

Cheers,

Aj