The Dubai Expat Diaries

Top 20 websites in the UAE

Middle East > United Arab Emirates > Abu Dhabi, Ajmān, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain

The most popular, most visited and the best websites on the internet, with a UAE / Middle East flavour!

TIME Magazine recently released an article, titled “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without” – some obvious choices and great finds in there, no doubt, however again a little disappointing since some of the choices are very USA focused. The rest of the world seems to be on the backburner again… in response here is a list of Top 20 websites that are making waves in the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East, based on traffic and popularity:

Yahoo!
www.yahoo.com
According to web traffic analysis companies (including Alexa Internet and Netcraft), Yahoo! has been the most visited website on the Internet, with more than 412 million unique users. Yahoo provides a wide array of internet services that cater to most online activities. It operates the web portal http://www.yahoo.com which provides contents including the latest news, Yahoo Finance and gives users quick access to other Yahoo services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger. Over 50% of the users on network visit to use their Yahoo! email. View the complete list of products and services offered by Yahoo!
Traffic Rank: 1 | Sites that Link here: 76,894 | Speed: Average (2.2 seconds) | Online Since: 18-Jan-1995

Google
www.google.ae and www.google.com
Google’s mission statement is, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google’s corporate philosophy includes statements such as, “You can make money without doing evil,” and, “Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun,” illustrating a somewhat relaxed corporate culture. Google is well-known for its web search service, which is a major factor of the company’s success. As of December 2006, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 50.8% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (23.6%) and Windows Live Search (8.4%). Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, Google News, the price comparison site Google Product Search, the interactive Usenet archive Google Groups, Google Maps and more.
Traffic Rank: 3 (google.com) 130 (google.ae) | Sites that Link here: 1,096 | Speed: Very Fast (0.9 seconds)

YouTube
www.youtube.com
YouTube is a popular video sharing website where users can upload, view, and share video clips. Videos can be rated, and the average rating and the number of times a video has been watched are both published. YouTube was created in mid February 2005 by three former employees of PayPal. The San Bruno-based service uses Adobe Flash technology to display video. The wide variety of site content includes movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos. Currently staffed by 67 employees, the company was named TIME magazine’s “Invention of the Year” for 2006. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for US$1.65 billion in Google’s stock.
Traffic Rank: 4 | Sites that Link here: 85,611 | Speed: Very Slow (4.3 seconds) | Online Since: 15-Feb-2005

Face Book
www.facebook.com
Facebook is the second most visited social networking website on the world wide web with over 28 million members. Facebook was originally restricted to members with a college or university email address, but has since been made available to any email address. People can select to join one or more participating networks, such as a high school, place of employment, or geographic region. As of February, 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 25 million members worldwide (also from non-collegiate networks). Facebook is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, ranked between top 10–20 most visited websites as of June, 2007.
Traffic Rank: 17 | Sites that Link here: 4,713 | Speed: Average (2.4 seconds) | Online Since: 29-Mar-1997

Maktoob
www.maktoob.com
Maktoob Inc. ( مكتوب) is an Arab Internet services company, based in Amman, Jordan known for being the first Arabic/English email service provider. “Maktoob” in Arabic means “letter”, “written”, or “Destiny”. Maktoob was founded in 1998 by Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury who were able to introduce a free email service with Arabic support for emails when no other free email service had such support. They also helped users who did not have Arabic Keyboards or browsers that support Arabic to send and receive emails by using a virtual keyboard which was done in Java, and using Java applets that had better Arabic support. The initial flourish of Maktoob and its large user base has led the company to create several channels for Arab users, and it has introduced many new sites and services not found previously in Arabic format, though the content of these sponsored channels is patchy at best. Over the years, it has also acquired a number of sites in the region that showed potential for growth.
Traffic Rank: 114 | Sites that Link here: 2,921 | Speed: Very Slow (9 seconds) | Online Since: 01-Oct-1998

Orkut
www.orkut.com
Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called “communities”) of users. Since October 2006 , Orkut permits users to create accounts without an invitation. In April 2007, Orkut introduced polls in communities. Orkut is the eighth most visited site throughout the world. It is also the second most visited site in India.
Traffic Rank: 8 | Sites that Link here: 10,620 | Speed: Slow (2.7 seconds) | Online Since: 08-Dec-2002

Friendster
www.friendster.com
Friendster is an Internet social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Abrams in March 2002 and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends (social network) technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon. Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004 when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Friendster has also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360, and Facebook. Of late, newer websites like Hi5 and iShoals are posing new competition for friendster. Google offered $30,000,000 to buy out Friendster in 2003, but they were turned down.
Traffic Rank: 21 | Sites that Link here: 6,685 | Speed: Slow (3 seconds) | Online Since: 22-Mar-2002

Wikipedia
www.wikipedia.com
Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers; the vast majority of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Wikipedia’s name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia has approximately 7.5 million articles in 253 languages, 1.84 million of which are in the English edition. Arabic version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language
Traffic Rank: 9 | Sites that Link here: 111,906 | Speed: Fast (1.6 seconds) | Online Since: 13-Jan-2001

Blogger
www.blogger.com
Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP. Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs in August 1999. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features that Pyra changed to be free. About a year later, Pyra Labs’ co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google. Google purchased Picasa in 2004; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utility Hello into Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs. It currently hosts a huge number of blogs, ranging from the personal to those used purely for business. Some blogs get large numbers of visitors every day yet remain hosted on Blogger’s free service.
Traffic Rank: 16 | Sites that Link here: 80,298 | Speed: Average (2 seconds) | Online Since: 22-Jun-1999

Microsoft Network & MSN Arabia
www.msn.com and arabia.msn.com
MSN (short for Microsoft Network) is a collection of Internet services provided by Microsoft. Initially released on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of Windows 95. The range of services provided has changed significantly since its release. The Hotmail webmail service was amongst the first (as of May 7th, 2007 it is being replaced by Windows Live Hotmail), followed by the instant messenger service MSN Messenger, which has recently been replaced by Windows Live Messenger. According to Alexa.com, MSN.com is currently ranked 2nd amongst all websites for Traffic Rank.
Traffic Rank: 2 | Sites that Link here: 19,552 | Speed: Very Slow (5.2 seconds) | Online Since: 10-Nov-1994

Bayt
View the latest Jobs added to the site
Bayt.com claims to be the #1 job site in the Middle East offering a complete range of end-to-end employment solutions and career planning tools. With over 26,000 employers across the Middle East, Pakistan and North Africa using Bayt.com to recruit top talent, job seekers can search and apply to that right job in minutes. The site features over 1,496,000 registered job seekers from across the globe representing all career levels.Traffic Rank: 1,605
Sites that Link here: 211 | Speed: Very Slow (8.9 seconds) | Online Since: 08-Oct-1998

Gulf News
www.gulfnews.com
Online version of the daily newspaper. Includes headlines, polls, articles, analysis, commentaries and weather updates. The UAE has a few major dailies, including Al-Bayan, Al-Ittihad, Al-Khaleej, Gulf News, Khaleej Times, Akhbar Al-Arab, Al-Wahda, Seven Days, Emirates Today.
Traffic Rank: 3,994 | Sites that Link here: 1,363 | Speed: Very Slow (5.5 seconds) | Online Since: 11-May-1998

Amazon
www.amazon.com
Amazon.com seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Site has numerous personalization features and services including one-click buying, extensive customer and editorial product reviews, gift registries, gift certificates, wish lists, restaurant and movie listings, travel, and photo processing. Residents of the UAE can utilize various shop & ship services to take advantage of ordering from Amazon in the US and UK, e.g. with Aramex.
Traffic Rank: 31 | Sites that Link here: 170,900 | Speed: Very Slow (4.5 seconds) | Online Since: 01-Nov-94

CNET Download.com
www.download.com
Download.com is an Internet download directory website, launched in 1996 as a part of CNET. Download.com offers content in four major categories: Software (including PC, Mac, and mobile), Music, Games, and Videos, offered for download via FTP from Download.com’s servers or third-party servers. Videos are streams (at present) and music is all free MP3 downloads, or occasionally rights-managed WMAs or streams. The Software section boasts over 100,000 freeware, shareware, and try-first downloads. Downloads are often rated and reviewed by editors, and also contain a summary of the file from the software publisher, and one or more screenshots. Users may also write reviews and log their ratings on a scale of 1-5 stars. Users should be aware of the fact that the software on the site may be outdated by several months or even years. By using it only as a search tool and then visiting the publishers webpage for the actual download, users get the latest version.
Traffic Rank: 116 | Sites that Link here: 20,956 | Speed: Very Slow (6.5 seconds) | Online Since: 24-Feb-1996

The Internet Movie Database
www.imdb.com
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. IMDb began on October 17, 1990 and in 1998 it was acquired by Amazon.com. The IMDb website consists of the largest accumulation of user based data about films, television programs, direct-to-video products, and video games reaching back to each medium’s respective beginning, and spanning content of origin from around the world. In many cases, the information goes beyond simple title or press credits to include complete cast and crew credits, uncredited personnel, production and distribution companies, plot summaries, memorable quotes, awards, reviews, box office performance, filming locations, technical specs, promotional content, trivia, and links to official and other websites.
Traffic Rank: 39 | Sites that Link here: 52,149 | Speed: Average (2.5 seconds) | Online Since: 05-Jan-1996

Souq
www.souq.com
Auction website for the Arab World. The world’s first Arabic/English online auction, MazadMaktoob launched in 2000, has now evolved into Souq.com, aided by another one of Maktoob Group’s innovations, CashU, which is one of the safest and most convenient forms of online payment, launched in 2002 and now generating millions of transactions worldwide.
Traffic Rank: 9,581 | Sites that Link here: 54 | Speed: Very Slow (6 seconds) | Online Since: 01-Feb-1996

AME Info
www.ameinfo.com
AME Info is a leading provider of online business information in and about the Middle East region under the title “AME Info – The ultimate Middle East business resource” (AME Info). Currently carrying some 111,982 news articles, 3,144 upcoming events as well as covering contact and activity details of 300,497 companies from 14 countries, including: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Syria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Traffic Rank: 4,316 | Sites that Link here: 3,083 | Speed: Very Slow (11.9 seconds) | Online Since: 05-Apr-1996

Based on traffic
United Arab Emirates University
www.uaeu.ac.ae
United Arab Emirates University (in Arabic:جامعة الإمارات العربية المتحدة) was established in 1976, and is the oldest of the three government-sponsored institutions of higher learning in the United Arab Emirates compared to the Higher Colleges of Technology and Zayed University. The university is located in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.
Traffic Rank: 2,585 | Sites that Link here: 623 | Speed: Average (2.6 seconds)

Honorable Mention
Arabic, English Forums & Communities
Forums, communities and blogging have seen a huge rise in popularity in the UAE and the Middle East in general. Some examples of these popular sites include:
Arabic: Ma7room www.ma7room.com An online Arabic community that has quite a high amount of traffic. Owned by a company called Mega Web in the UAE, which also runs various other sites like dubaimoon.com, alwasluae.com, alwaad.net, a7ma7m.com, e7sasgalb.com, gateofislam.com, uae9.com, forums-mania.com, uaepets.com and 3yonuae.com
Traffic Rank: 1,659 | Sites that Link here: 250 | Speed: Very Slow (8.6 seconds) | Online Since: 11-Jan-2003.
English: Dubai Forums | Discuss Dubai | Gossip Dubai | UAE Forums | ExpatGossip | Dubai Forum.co.uk | Dubai Property Forum | Expat Focus | HiDubai | Easy Expat | Allo’ Expat | MashUp – student community Evolve Auto Couture | Dubai Lime | Dubizzle | Mumtazz | iXpats Community

UAE Women Network
بوابة المرأة الإماراتية على الإنترنت
www.uaewomen.net
Online community website dedicated to the UAE women and families. This is basically a web forum / discussion board in Arabic, which is quite popular in the United Arab Emirates and also receives traffic from other Middle East countries.

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About the United Arab Emirates: The United Arab Emirates (also the UAE or the Emirates) is a Middle Eastern country situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia on the Persian Gulf, comprising seven emirates: Abu Dhabi, Ajmān, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. The United Arab Emirates has the highest Internet population penetration in the Middle East, with about 35% of the approx 4 million people in the country using the Internet.

About the Middle East: One widely used definition of the “Middle East” is that of the airline industry, maintained by the IATA standards organization. This definition — as of early 2007 — includes Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Yemen. The Middle East is home to approx 194 million people, out of which about 10% use the Internet…the usage growth over 2000-2007 stands at a whopping 491% (stats as of June14, 2007)

Note:
This list is complied based on Alexa traffic rankings. If you know any sites that should be covered please let us know by leaving a comment below…we appreciate info on any websites that do justice to the economy, people and culture of the UAE, as well as sites that endeavour to serve the needs of its residents. All comments are moderated and spam will be deleted. Thank you for taking the time to make this list a one-stop resource for the best websites in the UAE!