The search engine, planned for a launch in the last quarter of the year, could also set a tough challenge for Google, MSN and Yahoo, which offer basic Arabic search functions.
Seekport unveiled the Sawafi project with Saudi partner Integrated Technical Solutions in Riyadh this week.
The companies hope to cater to Arab web surfers; the region itself contains 280 million people, but Internet penetration is low. They also could benefit from a large population of ex-pats in the U.S., U.K. and throughout Europe.
According to a recent study by Dubai-based Madar, 65 percent of Arab Internet users in 2005 could not read English, which accounts for 70 percent of the material on the Internet.
“There is not enough Arabic content available on the Internet, but there's no motivation to put more Arabic content on the Internet as long as you don't have a system to find the content,” Seekport’s Hermann Havermann said.
He said that Saudi Arabia -- where porn sites are blocked completely -- and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates could be key places for winning online advertising to fuel Arabic search engines.
“Search engines are dependent on income from advertising, and for this you need partners and marketing agencies. They are in Dubai,” Havermann said. “On the other side, the Arabic user market is in Saudi Arabia.”
Seekport and Integrated Technical have been closely watching Baidu, a Chinese language search engine that has catapulted its market base of more than 100 million surfers.
“There is no Arabic Internet search engine on the market,” Havermann said. “You find so-called search engines, but they involve a directory search, not a local search. There's nothing available for overall Internet search.”
