For a while now I've had many issues I've wanted to report, but most of the time I will have to link to the originator of the information. Whether it's because of plagiarism issues or because of the Search Engine penalties for duplicate content.. I've always found myself to be reluctant to link to an outbouding link.

Another issue, is the fact that most websites on the internet don't share the same values as me or many of my readers. So it might contain advertisements to lewd sites or other sites unbecoming of a Muslim who fears his Lord to visit.

What do you do then?

With Search Engines, if I don't necessarily agree with a site or I don't want to give my link to it any value, I can easily add a rel="nofollow" tag within the link tag. That way the Search Engine will know that I am not related to the site and won't count my linking to it as a voucher for its credibility or relevance to my site.

I sometimes will copy the whole article's text and then throw a link at the bottom showing the credits, but that's really rare like I did for a post on my Migraine Blog about the Migraine Gadget but it was not an issue since the site I was linking to was the manufacturer of the gadget and thus wasn't really offensive in any way.

If any of you have any ideas, let me know... especially if you're a web developer or admin a website.

My websites are mostly informational and they do make me a very small amount of money (mainly just to ay the phone bill I guess) but thats from the Google Ads that show up on the top and bottom of the page.


Advertisements

Another piece of feedback I would like, is if anybody sees an ad that is un-Islamic or offensive (as sometimes there are links to Christian Da`wah sites or Personals /Dating sites) please let me know of the URL (website address http://www.BlahBlahBlah.com) that way I can put it through the ad filter and it won't be shown.

I been so busy these days with finals and school and events in Madinah, that it's just rediculous.

Insha Allaah, I'll have a few new posts up soon, it's been 40 days since the last post, thats sad.
I opened a new site, just to give my personal blog a little breathing room.

Also, I changed my migraine blog's address, but as soon as I did, in about hours, somebody else took the old name before I could re-register it and put up info that I moved my site. It caused a BIG traffic toll, but oh well.. Lamers will be lamers... retards will be retards.

Peace out people.

I just submitted my blog to BlogWise, thinking it would be like any other Blog Directory. Too bad they have too few HUMANS to administer the World Wide Wasteland:

Your site has been added to the submission queue. Thank you for adding your site to Blogwise.

It is important to us that all entries are checked for consistency before approval, however Blogwise is run by volunteers contributing their spare time. There may be a small delay before your blog is added to the directory.

There are currently 41012 blog(s) in the queue. Your blog is expected to be added within 136 day(s).

If your blog is accepted by the reviewer, you will receive a notification by email. Due to the high number of submissions being processed, we cannot respond to or discuss rejections in detail.

New search engine could boost Arab Internet usage
Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:10 PM ET
By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi-German plan to launch a dedicated Arabic language search engine for the World Wide Web could revolutionize the moribund Arabic Internet market, a senior official in the project said.

"Sawafi", planned for the last quarter of 2006, could also set a tough challenge for international search giants such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, which offer a basic Arabic search facility at present.

"There is no (full) Arabic Internet search engine on the market. You find so-called search engines, but they involve a directory search, not a local search. There's nothing available for overall Internet search," Hermann Havermann, managing director of German Internet tech firm Seekport, told Reuters.

"If you look at the international search engines, their functionality is non-existent. This market really lacks the support of an Arabic search engine," he said.

Seekport unveiled the project with Saudi partner Integrated Technical Solutions in Riyadh this week. The company, Sawafi, is registered in the Gulf Arab business hub of Dubai.

Sawafi is hoping to copy the success of local Chinese language search engine Baidu, which has made huge strides in a market with over 100 million Web surfers.

Everything is to play for in the Arab world of 280 million people, where Internet penetration is low. There are also large expatriate Arab communities in Europe and North America.

"There are only 100 million Web pages right now in Arabic, and that's nothing. It's only 0.2 percent of the total worldwide," Havermann said.

Research commissioned from Dubai-based Internet researcher Madar shows the number of Arabic Internet users could jump to 43 million in 2008 from 16 million in 2004, Havermann said.

According to Madar, 65 percent of Arab Internet users in 2005 could not read English, which accounts for 70 percent of the material on the Internet.

Better search engines are key to a turnaround.

"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," Havermann said.

Saudi Arabia, with an affluent population of 24 million, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates would 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."

The Arabic online advertising market could grow to $150 million in 2008 from $10 million at present, he said.

So, is "Sawafi" the Google Killer?

I don't think so... in fact with their recent translation software I believe that if google wanted to it could easily apply its technology to the arab market as it recently did with the chinese. Also, given the conservative nature of (some) Arabs, Google could also voluntarily filter and censor controversial subject matter as it did with the chinese market.

Sawafi heralds itself as a copycat of baidu , a homegrown chinese search engine, and will be funded by partners in dubai and saudi, expect it later this year.