An Iranian search engine Parsijoo (meaning Persian Search) has recently been equipped with one of the most comprehensive and modern download services, said the website's project manager.
According to Mehr News Agency, Ali Mohammad Zare-Bidaki said that this will help meet the needs and demands of Persian users and optimize download speed.
According to Mojgan Farhoudi, secretary of the engine's technical workgroup, the local system, launched after nearly two years of research and development, is known for its practicality, simplicity, diversity and accuracy.
She explained that the beta version of Parsijoo covers 500 million Persian websites and the next step would be to increase the number to one billion.
The search engine was fully operational in September, enabling users to look for maps, images, audio files, news, weather forecasts and translation services.
The website is receiving 190,000 referrals daily and can potentially host five times the current number, as the team regularly assesses user preferences to perk up search results.
It has been predicted that the website will be able to collect 500,000, 1.2 million, 2.5 million and 4 million users in the first four years of its launch respectively, according to current estimates.
With the recent upgrade, users will be able to download software, games, movies and mobile phone applications while significantly reducing the download time.
For downloading software, users currently need to browse through other search engines to find the target files via a direct or indirect links (on servers offering upload and download domains). From this point on, users will easily spot and access the download links right after hitting the search button, therefore decreasing the exploration time by half.
"The engine is highly proficient in web crawling, indexing and searching, and can retrieve them more efficiently to offer the user," Zare-Bidaki said. "It basically enables users to access the best download links in the shortest amount of time."
On the reason behind equipping the engine with such a service, he said, "The latest survey on frequent queries among users showed that the most trending searches over the course of last year pertained to download links, hence we have tried to meet this demand in a practical manner."
The search engine has so far tracked down and indexed 120,000 downloadable files, including software, games, films and mobile apps, and is constantly being updated to include e-books, music, animated movies and other popular files soon.
It is capable of presenting customized results on a particular subject or listing as well as the latest posts on a specific topic, the project manager added.
To support local services, content creation and idea development, the Telecommunications Company allocated just over 170 trillion rials ($52 million at market exchange rate) for developing local search engines for a five-year period. The budget is expected to cover the expenses of setting up the engines, developing the needed infrastructures, legal support, research and development, customer service and maintenance.
Parsijoo hopes to achieve over 80% of the quality that Iran's and world's most visited website—Google—offers. In September, Google claimed 67.49% of the world's market share. The project was supposed to be launched in September, however technical issues may have slowed down the progress of the project.
Iran has launched other search engines previously, including ones for specific tasks like price comparison. In one government sponsored project launched over a year ago the stated aim was to win back market share from international competitors like Google.
However, the stated aims of the project far exceeded its capabilities and were quietly pushed to one side, according to one search engine expert, who didn't want to be named.
Local search engines also have a limited market entry period to make any headway against their billion dollar American competition who is interested in the local market.
As another unnamed tech source speaking to Tribune said Google is "currently scoping out the local tech scene," meaning they may be preparing to enter with a local offering.
Users can have the benefit of the powerful engine by visiting download.parsijoo.ir.
