What did Middle East Search in 2011 on Google - Trends Part 1

This series covers Google Trends 2011 for UAE,  Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Oman and Lebanon.

Google has once again released its annual Zeitgeist report, showing the fastest rising searches for countries all over the world. Saudi Arabia and Egypt were covered as part of the MENA region. I have used Google Trends to do the analysis of other countries in the Middle East. 

Part 1 covers - UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. 

Part 2 covers - Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan 

UAE 

The country has the highest Internet Penetration rate of 69 % (via - according to internetworldstats.com) in Middle East. Most of the search terms are in English. After ‘Dubai’, ‘Facebook’ remains the most search term. In the rising searches, ‘Al Jazeera’ and ‘Dubizzle’ are amongst the top 5 searched terms.

Cricket and related websites like ‘cricinfo’ are amongst the top emerging searches, giving credit to the world cup held this year.  

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia – The country with the highest number of Internet Users (11,400,000 as of 30 June 2011 according to internetworldstats.com) in Middle East region. Most of the searched terms are in Arabic, which shows popularity of the language in the online world. ‘Facebook’ and ‘Youtube’ remain popular searches amongst the internet users. Photos and Game are some of the most searched categories in Saudi Arabia. Spongebob and Twitter are also popular keywords among the Saudi users. With the recent investment of $300 million by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in Twitter, the website’s popularity will surge in the country. 

Oman

Oman – The country has an internet penetration rate of 48.4%. Facebook and Youtube are popular searches in the country. Al Sablah seems to be popular community forum in Oman, which appear in the existing and rising search trends. Hotmail is also among the rising searches in the country. Elakiri Community is another forum listed in the rising searches. 

Click here to view Google Trends for 2010.