Al Bawaba, who operates the Middle East focused websites, Albawaba.com and MENA Report, reveals what the Middle East on-line community is really doing while surfing the net. Al Bawaba, has completed the first interactive audit with the global media auditor BPA Worldwide of any website in the region. The audit for the month of December 2005 revealed 6,605,945 page requests and 1,475,985 visits – officially the largest of any web site in the Middle East region. The audited research shows some alarming statistics never before unearthed in the Middle East.
Unsurprisingly, the English and Arabic language Home Pages were the most visited pages on the Al Bawaba site. The next most visited page from the site was the Al Bawaba Forums. On-line forums are interactive notice boards where the on-line community can meet to exchange ideas. While a few countries in the Middle East restrict these pages, the majority of on-line users are able to access Al Bawaba Forums and use this medium to discuss many topics including religion and politics.
The next most visited pages were music downloads.
Mr Hani Jabsheh, Al Bawaba’s Director, commented: “This shows two important trends in the Middle East region. Firstly that Arabic music has an ever growing following among all nationalities. The majority of the music we have on the site has an Arabic influence to it or is international main-stream that Arabic listeners enjoy and we are seeing downloads in massive numbers from around the world. Secondly, never let it be said that there is nothing more appealing to our users than something for free. Al Bawaba believes that illegal free downloads of commercial music is detrimental to the music industry and we do charge a minimum cost for this service, but we do offer visitors free streaming of music and music videos. It looks like our users love this.”
There is also a serious side to our on-line habits in the Middle East. The next most visited area on the site was the business and political news from around the region. Statistics show that when it comes to business news, the regional population by far prefers to read their business news in English over Arabic.
When do people spend the most time on-line?
Mr Hani Jabsheh, Al Bawaba’s Director, commented: “Wednesdays are the most popular day of the week to be on-line. We expect as the Muslim week comes to an end and many people are planning their weekend, they turn to on-line resources.”
The busiest traffic can be seen first thing in the day – at 9am across the region. However, the on-line community has more time to spend at the site in the early evening at about 7pm (an average of over 7 minutes on the site as compared with only 6 minutes at the beginning of the day).
Mr Hani Jabsheh, Al Bawaba’s Director, said: “One thing is for sure, the Internet and Al Bawaba as the official largest Middle East focused web site, is becoming part of our society. We get to work and go on line, we go home and we log on, we turn to the Internet for business news and entertainment, we talk to our friends and family using the internet and of course make new friends on-line. The next BPA interactive audit of Al Bawaba Group is planned for June 2006 and we look forward to finding out how the tends in the region are developing.”
© 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
