Funded by ex-googlers, yamli.com is first to introduce expanded search engine technology

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - December 15th, 2008 - Yamli.com, a startup targeting the Arabic Web, unveiled its new search engine that allows users to easily search Arabic content in all its forms. Various studies show that transliterated Arabic content is ubiquitous due to a large portion of Arabic internet users choosing to write Arabic phonetically using Latin characters in an ad-hoc and informal fashion.  Yamli automatically expands Arabic keyword searches to include all of their transliterated variations and returns results for both Arabic and transliterated content. This feature is a breakthrough for Arabic Internet users who are frustrated with having to repeatedly search different variations of their query when searching for music, news or videos.

According to co-founder Habib Haddad, "The challenge with Arabic content is that it's hard to reach all of it.  For example, a simple search for 'Umm Khulthum', the famous Egyptian signer, has over 90 transliterated variations - Om Kaltoum, Oum Kalsoum, etc....  Yamli  will take an Arabic search term and expand it to include all transliterated variations, returning the maximum number of relevant search results, regardless of whether Arabic or Latin characters were used to write the content.  Prior to Yamli, that kind of search was not possible," concluded Haddad.

Yamli Search comes with a rich and easy-to-use interface that has been optimized for slower connections. Under the hood, it uses APIs from search engines such as Google, Microsoft Live Search and YouTube. Yamli Search also includes Yamli's award-winning Smart Arabic keyboard that allows users to type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard.

According to one of the early ex-Googlers Georges Harik, "The web is universal, and speakers of every language should get equal access to information. Yamli continues to do a great job of extending access to information to all Arabic speakers," concluded Georges Harik who is also an investor in Yamli.

Yamli's new search engine was first announced at Harvard Business School's MENA Conference on Saturday, December 4th during a panel discussion on Entrepreneurship in the MENA region in which co-founder Habib Haddad participated. 

You can try Yamli Search for yourself at http://www.yamli.com/

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About Yamli.com
Yamli.com, a web-based Arabic transliteration tool and search engine, empowers users to easily use and access Arabic content on the web.  All Yamli.com products are property of Language Analytics LLC, a software startup based in Cambridge, MA, that specializes in smart transliteration technologies for Arabic and other languages.  For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

Editorial Contact:
Habib Haddad
Language Analytics LLC
press@yamli.com
617-395-8513

© Press Release 2008