A new project has been planned to create a national web archive in Iran to store content from Persian websites and make it available to the public.
This is a sub-project of a larger plan for developing local search engines backed by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Mehr News Agency reported.
The council for the development of local search engines had previously made a public announcement to identify and support those who can contribute to the national web archive project.
Public calls have also been planned for the near future in areas such as developing location-based services for web and mobile, developing video and audio search services, local social networking platforms and specialized search engines.
It will also hold directory searches and auto suggestions for collecting and updating frequently-used local data, analyzing user behavior and developing tools and infrastructures for data analysis.
The council will also release details on financial support guidelines and the technical and economic models of the plan. Decisions that concern the plan’s launch will be announced later.
The major policies, strategies, goals and objectives of the plan have already been finalized. Other decisions, which have already been made, concern the plans-of-action and progress plan as well as the costs and final budget.
The team is currently working on a schedule and making preparations for holding public tenders.
Currently two main local search engine projects are underway in Iran, namely Yooz and Parsijoo. Local officials stress that the development of local search engines can help intensify data protection.
Financial Tribune’s survey in May 2015 revealed search engines Google, Yahoo and ask.com are among the top 10 websites most visited in Iran, whereas the local ones were not widely popular.
In June 2015, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi said “we do not intend to compete with or limit access to Google.”
“Iran presents a competitive market and people will ultimately use whichever search engine best satisfies their demands,” Vaezi said.
Those who back local search engine projects say the search engines will ease access to governmental and non-governmental bases that do not show up in results delivered by foreign search engines.
What distinguishes local search engines from foreign versions is that local engines generally promote local content (documents, audio files and videos) and services.
