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

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

The latest comScore Study in December 2007 shows, Chinese Search Engine www.Baidu.com became the 3rd Ranked Search Property Worldwide with 3.4 billion searches, capturing 5.2% percent of worldwide search share.


Baidu recently launched their Japan Language www.Baidu.jp, which will increase their market share eventually.




Here is the Search Market Share BreakDown Chart, dated DEC 2007



















Well, its quite interesting to see an regional player getting in to international level.

Thanks
Ajz