Google launches user-led Arabic Q&A tool

Google has launched a user-driven question and answer tool, called Ejabat, which makes it easier for users in the region to find information online in Arabic.

Less than one percent of content on the web is in Arabic, with users often unable to find the same depth and variety of information had they been searching in English, the search engine said.

With Ejabat - Google’s effort to ‘enrich the Arabic web’ – users can help bridge that gap by posting and answering questions in Arabic.

"In our effort to understand the needs of the market we found out that Arabic users ask Google a tremendous number of questions every day, however a lot of these remain unanswered due to the lack of Arabic content online,” said Wael Ghonim, regional product & marketing manager at Google MENA.

“We recognise that users are the best at answering each others' questions within a community and this product is the prefect way to be able to share and contribute information.”

Catering to market needs, Google released Ejabat in Arabic, before English. Arabic was also one of the first languages Google globally launched for its Knol knowledge sharing tool at the end of last year.

Last week, the company released Google Sites in Arabic, allowing people to create websites without having any prior HTML knowledge or web design skills. Depending on user preferences, these sites can then be shared within a group of corporate users or with the world.

"We strive to make our products available in every language around the world. Making Google Sites available in Arabic means Arab users can create a customised and sharable site within minutes, without using even a line of code. All it takes to start a new page is just one click," added Ghonim.

Visit http://ejabat.google.com

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