Summary of initial
webometrics
Web sites linking to or mentioning
BBC Arabic
Some indication of the impact of BBC Arabic – gained by
four different Yahoo searches – details on following pages
Name
URLs Domains TLDs
Web pages containing Arabic and mentioning
BBC Arabic
3956
1811
50
Web pages containing Arabic and mentioning
"‫"بي بي سي العربية‬
4920
2210
48
Web pages containing Arabic and linking to the
872
home page of www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/
534
26
Web pages containing Arabic and linking to
bbcarabic.com
628
26
1259
Table 2. Web sites frequently
mentioning BBC Arabic in pages
containing Arabic
Site
URLs
%
blogspot.com
39
1.0%
truveo.com
30
0.8%
middleeasttransparent.com 29
0.7%
maktoob.com
29
0.7%
metransparent.com
29
0.7%
esgmarkets.com
24
0.6%
wasalive.com
22
0.6%
Some are Arabic
yahoo.com
21
0.5%
mostathmr.com
21
0.5%
metransparent.net
21
0.5%
Some are generic but
Used for Arabic content
sometimes
The report contains
A longer list
The list gives an idea
Of the most important
Web sites for BBC
Arabic
Table 3. Web sites frequently
mentioning "‫"بي بي سي العربية‬
Site
URLs
%
blogspot.com
maktoob.com
moheet.com
moq3.com
43
40
35
30
0.9%
0.8%
0.7%
0.6%
nesasy.org
google.com
albawaba.com
29
29
23
0.6%
0.6%
0.5%
jeeran.com
com.sa
farfesh.com
23
22
22
0.5%
0.4%
0.4%
Similar to previous slide
Uses the most common
translation of BBC Arabic(?)
Table 4. Web sites frequently
linking to BBCArabic.com in pages
containing Arabic
Site
blogspot.com
sunloove.net
alwatansudan.c
om
jeeran.com
maktoobblog.c
om
maktoob.com
asmarna.net
angelfire.com
URLs %
35
2.8%
32
2.5%
30
2.4%
27
2.1%
27
2.1%
25
16
15
2.0%
1.3%
1.2%
Links are another way
of identifying relevant sites
Table 5. Web sites frequently
linking to www.bbc.co.uk/Arabic/ in
pages containing Arabic
Site
URLs %
maktoobblog.com 30
3.4%
blogspot.com
25
2.9%
8m.com
jeeran.com
khayma.com
angelfire.com
23
23
22
16
2.6%
2.6%
2.5%
1.8%
al-falahiya.net
elaphblog.com
16
15
1.8%
1.7%
Using links to the alternative
BBC Arabic URL
Arab social network sites/blogs
• We haven’t found the main ones
– arabfriendz.com;arabicspace.com;kalamarab.com;
arabchat.org (all small – there must be bigger sites)
• Facebook may be widely used – impossible to
analyse with Webometrics due to privacy
• Blogs and discussion forums would be better to
analyse but are difficult to find
• Could analyse a list of Arabic blog hosting sites
or social network sites if anyone has one??
Future webometrics work?
• We can run a similar analysis on
“competitor” web sites that are similar to
BBC Arabic
– Look for sites that link to them but not to BBC
Arabic?
• Can also run a similar analysis on
specified Arabic blog/social network sites?