DUBAI: Orascom Telecom Holding unveiled a new bilingual search engine that is set to change the way internet users look for Arab-related content.
With the growing amount and interest in Arabic content on the web and the increasing number of users, the new search engine ‘Onkosh’ was developed to address the needs of the Arab user. It achieves quick, comprehensive and high precision search results and focuses on Arab-related content, dealing with culture, news, blogs, entertainment and other information related to the Arab World.
In addition, for the first time ever on the web, users are able to search for Arabic words by typing in English characters, through the patented ‘Bel3araby’ transliteration feature. This intelligent and unique feature is a reflection of how Onkosh was developed in line with current Arab web usage trends.
Khaled Bichara, Orascom Telecom Holding Board Member, said: “This project was one of the most exciting and challenging tasks our team undertook. Engineering a search engine is no easy task in itself, and if we add the fact that Onkosh speaks and understands the complexities of the Arabic language and can transliterate English words into their equivalent Arabic words, it becomes clear why other global and local players have not undertaken this mission yet.
“Onkosh recognizes the intricacies of the Arabic language, and is designed to efficiently crawl and index the web, producing much more satisfactory and relevant Arabic-related search results.
A beta version of the search engine has been online for the last year, during which the development team worked to improve and fine-tune the engine.
With an index of hundreds of millions of web pages and web-accessible documents, Onkosh is able to answer queries in less than a second and can handle thousands of concurrent users. It incorporates search services for the Web, News, Images, Forums, Blogs and Files, as well as offering an Arabic web directory.
It also contains an up-to-the-minute Blog search that covers thousands of Arab-related blogs. In addition, it provides a ‘File Search’ feature which allows users to find files that are linked to forums and music sites – an important feature, considering that an estimated 70 percent of Arabic internet usage is focused on forum usage.
Onkosh News covers news from a large number of Arabic online sources, within minutes of its appearance on the web. The search engine also provides a ‘Family Filter’ to filter out adult and objectionable content. In addition, a mobile version, available on onkosh.mobi, makes Onkosh the first mobile Arabic search engine.
Onkosh translates as “unearth’ in Arabic. Users looking for quick, comprehensive and high precision results while searching for Arab-related information on the web can visit www.onkosh.com.
