Lost in Cyberspace: How Do Search Engines Handle Arabic Queries?

Abstract

The performances of general and Arabic search engines were compared based on their ability to retrieve morphologically related Arabic terms. The findings highlight the importance of making users aware of what they miss by using the general engines, underscoring the need to modify these engines to better handle Arabic queries.Nous avons comparé la performance de moteurs de recherches généraux et arabes en fonction de leur capacité à repérer des termes arabes morphologiquement reliés. Les résultats mettent en évidence l’importance de sensibiliser les usagers sur ce qu’ils manquent en utilisant des moteurs de recherche généraux et soulignent le besoin de modifier ces moteurs pour obtenir un meilleur traitement des requêtes arabes.

Influence of language and file type on the web visibility of top European universities

“…Direct language analysis depends on the range of the language detection software (it should be able to recognise all computer-mediated written languages in the world), whereas the use of commercial search engines depends on coverage (web indexed), suitable query commands and accuracy in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) counts, and different issues related to specific languages that search engines have to face (Moukdad and Cui, 2005;Lazarinis, 2007).…”