Url Optimization For Arab Language Character Set Options

[randfish]

OK, so I rarely get stumped, but this one just had me completely without an answer.

What if you are optimizing in the Arabic character language set and want to include "keywords" in your URL. Can you use UTF8 or ISO-8895 character sets to display these properly in the URLs? I've never seen it, but then again, I'm not even sure I know how to surf Arabic language websites properly.

Can something like this go into URL strings for browsers that have support for Arabic language sets?

دليل مواقع اسلامية بمعظم لغات العا

http://www.google.com/search?q=+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7 - I note that Google seems to use a combination of alpha and numeric characters to form the words - is that how URLs should look, too?

This post has been edited by randfish: Oct 11 2007, 02:46 AM

[Voytec]

Interesting problem, I would never thought you could make SE friendly urls in Arabic! It looks like the alpha-numeric string is the right way to do it - Wikipedia does that with all the ‘non Latin’ characters:
ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B9%D8%B4%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%A9
new.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%82_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%8C

Google does that too:
dir.google.com/Top/World/Chinese_Simplified/%E8%B4%AD%E7%89%A9/

This post has been edited by Voytec: Oct 11 2007, 05:02 AM

[Black_Knight]

Look at http://www.dmoz.org/World/Arabic/

DMOZ is well enough established and indexed that we can have faith the spiders can handle it.

[yannis]

Can something like this go into URL strings for browsers that have support for Arabic language sets?

دليل مواقع اسلامية بمعظم لغات العا

It can go in the URL but as you have guessed it will be encoded and hence will have zero value from the point of a human reader, it will actually make it worse! From the point of view of spiders it offers an advantage. How much an advantage is as debatable as a 'keyword in URL'! The URI specification only supports ASCII characters but was modified sometime in the early 2000's to support UTF-08 but in encoded form.

Yannis

[A.N.Onym]

One thing that our local webmasters do is to write the words using Latin letters for the corresponding letters from the language. While it doesn't help with the search engines, it makes the URLs appear in the native language (albeit using Latin alphabet) and such URLs are easier to use (remember, refer and link to), too.

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Oct 13 2007, 05:28 AM

[iamlost]

Thanks A.N.Onym - helpful workarounds are priceless.

As Ekstreme isn't blowing his own horn I will:
http://ekstreme.com/thingsofsorts/web-programming/arabic-seo
Very nice followup on the question for us lingua-capped folks.

Every day my door on the world opens to more places.

[eKstreme]

Thanks We're all in this game together.

I'm intrigued by Yuri's comment above about writing "the words using Latin letters for the corresponding letters from the language". This is exactly what I'm describing in the Anglicized Arabic section of my post. I know my Greek friends do that too. Is there a whole new set of mirror languages out there? Could we optimize for it? Oooh, that would be a good experiment!

Pierre

[iamlost]

Is there a whole new set of mirror languages out there? Could we optimize for it? Oooh, that would be a good experiment!

I wondered if I was the only one who went ah ha!
Unfortunately I do not have the necessary language skills so would miss nuances.
By all means test and report. Or test and make gold.

[yannis]

It is a good tip but I am not sure about the SEO effects . I have not seen it in arabic, chinese or greek though except for names of films or singers and the like. Most arabic users will google in arabic try http://www.google.com.qa , for persons living within this geographic region, it will default to arabic script! A phonetic equivalent will never be an option as a search word to these users. The chinese will just have their keyboards and everything set in chinese and use a similar search pattern to arab users. I personally visit greek sites, but will always search in english and request google to show me greek websites!


Yannis