Examining Web Search Trends Across Arab Countries

The Web has become a major worldwide source of information and services. It has emerged as a worldwide phenomenon; almost every one in this world uses the Web in order to fulfill a specific need such as finding information, buying or selling etc. In this research, we have tried to investigate and understand the searching trends in the Arab countries over the period from 2004 to 2009. Top searched queries by Arab users of Google’s search engine and the average query length were also evaluated. Google Insights for Search is another service related to search query trends from Google that is utilized. The total number of queries collected from Google Insights for Search was 5,113 queries submitted to Google search engine during a 6-year period, covering 18 of the Arab countries. Findings showed that there was some consistency in the search trends across all studied Arab countries, with a concentration on search topics related to entertainment, recreation, computer, or the Internet. Some topics have an increased share of queries as we moved from 2004 up to 2009; others have decreased in their share during the same time period. Users consistently concentrate their searches for topics related to entertainment or recreation. Users also tend to submit more queries in their native language rather than using English. Finally, users tend to submit too short queries with two terms or less. Insights are provided on the possibility of utilizing such information in search engine optimization or for a marketing purpose.