ImHalal.com – First Islamic Halal Search Engine
For the first time now, there is an Islamic search engine which aims at providing a general purpose search that is free of “haram” content, i.e. offensive contents that contradicts with Islamic laws and beliefs. The search engine is wisely called ImHalal.com, and I bet we will see widely increased interest in such a service from conservative people, and parents who want to keep their kids off the harmful web contents.
To reach it’s Halal goal, the site seems to be using two methods. One is by filtering out “Haram” sites and contents, and this can be seen clearly from the Image search, which is still in Beta. When searching for various keywords or celebrity names for example, results from ImHalal.com are much more decent in this regard than Google and Yahoo in their strict mode.
The other method, which I don’t like as much, is the black listing of keywords, ranking them with “Haram” scale of 1 to 3. If the “Haram” level is 1 or 2, you get a warning plus an option to move forward.
Annoying but bearable. The bad thing about it is, it seems to have no intelligence in it, as it blindly blocks Haram words disregard of the actual context or full search or purpose. Example?
Breast is a black listed word, disregard of what you’re really looking for. Even “Wire Stripper” is a level 3 Haram word for including Stripper. I love wire strippers :(.
And the devil word Haram is also a level 3.
Now here it completely misses the point. There is a difference between doing wrong, and reading about what’s wrong. And trust me, offensive sites won’t use the word Haram anyways. It doesn’t help their marketing. Add to that that you can actually search for Haram in Arabic حرام and it works. I have also managed to pass through several bad words, and reach some blocked sites eventually. So this paradigm isn’t the best. Some intelligence needs to be built-in.
Now as to where does this magic come from, It’s still unclear. Is it an engine built in-house? If so, credible search engines usually list their IPs and spider name for webmasters to allow or deny it. But I couldn’t find anything in my log reports. I wasn’t able also to tie it to any of the famous search engines. Is it powered by any of them, or any other service? Usually there would be some information about the source of those indexes, but not here.
[via Social Media Portal]
Popularity: 10% [?]
Related Posts:
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
[...] To reach it’s Halal goRead more at http://blogallalong.com/2009/09/02/imhalal-com-first-islamic-halal-search-engine/ [...]
i agree, “a journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step”. at least they decided to take it, good luck to them with it :)
I think it’s just stupid, though I know I’m rushing into my conclusion but from the results you got.
You want your kids to surf responsibly, educate them oo khalas.
The name is weird, like searching for meat or something, I think it’s lame. Indeed it blocks according to keywords which is retarded.
I hate when they force restriction as if we don’t know any better!
Maryam: LOL… I thought you would take it better :). I hate it too. But face it, some people do want to avoid bad results, and this might be a relief for them.
My kid ends up anywhere. I just hope he doesn’t place Amazon orders anytime soon :P
INFACT IT IS A GIANT STEP FOR MANKIND.IT IS SAFE SEARCH INGINES FOR CHILD TEENAGERS AND FOR ALL MUSLIMS.I WAS EAGERLY LOOKING FOR SUCH SEARCH ENGINES TOCONTROL OUR SATANIC EMOTIONS.MAY GOD REWARD U FOR THIS TASK.
WHAT A MARVELLOUS DISCVERY U HAVE MADE.CONGRATULATION! THIS SEARCH ENGINES HELP US TO KEEP ALOOF FROM THE UNWANTED AND HARAM SITES.IT IS CHILD PROOF,PRONE PROOF ENGINES WHICH WILL STOP US TO REACH SINFUL WEBSITES.IT WILL MAKE A HALAL AND PAAK CULTURE IN FUTURE.
seriously I’m assuming the above two comments are spam!
We had a meeting with a web filtering service, websense, and what they do is include human factor that categorizes websites discovered daily. They don’t depend on crawlers that index sites depending on content and keywords only, because it can never compare to human conclusion … yet!
Let’s say a person types in a “haram” word “sex” what they can do is exclude the results not the keyword itself, which I think is totally STUPID, there are medical, social, legitimate sites that come under that word.
You get my point, I hate it when they come up with these stuff under Islamic intentions! Ridiculous. Thank you, but I’m sticking to Google :D
nesar ahmed & KASHIF KAMRAN: Thanks. Although I still see it needs a lot run.
Maryam: Hmm I dunno, possibly but not sure :).
The false-positive filtering of sites you mentioned is exactly why I hate filtering and decide to go open. Google FTW.
[...] To reach it’s Halal goRead more at http://blogallalong.com/2009/09/02/imhalal-com-first-islamic-halal-search-engine/ [...]
this site is a complete []….
search the word “love”,,, and it replies “Oops! Your search inquiry has a Haram level of 1 out of 3. This means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com could be haram!”
muddassir ladiwala: I think it will get attention, but it still needs a lot of work.
harris: The word filtering is not quite as it should be.
THANKS MARIYUM BI FOR HER COMMENTS.IS IT NOT NECESSARY TO HAVE A WATCHDOG ON TEENAGERS NOT TO SERVE MORALLY SOCIALLY THE HARAM SITES WHICH INSTIGATES EVEN OLDERS WHILE SERVING RELIGIOUS SITES.INFACT SUCH HALALSEARCH ENGINES WILL A ROLE OF MORAL GUARDIAN.
be united and stick to those things which keep u away from haram things. it is a good search engine one can search with confident that there would not be any bad thing come out.
i think after this new muslim’s search engine muslims will get their own place in the world
i love islam
congratulation!i am very happy about this act of muslims.wish you best of luck muslims and God always bless u(amin)
I used it and feel slightly complications, But over all found good results and Its a good step for all our muslims people and as a muslim I suggest to all our muslims people to contribut and use this site inshallah this will be a great success.
Regards,
Asif Jan.
I like this website very much. and i invite to all Muslims to come and join this website and search Engine.
Thank you.
Rizwan Ullah
Salam sister Maryam.The purpose of such a search engine is to ensure that children do not act irresponsibly by accessing pornography and other unhealthy sites. As to the other comments about its efficiency, I would like to suggest to them to give ‘iamhalal’ a chance to grow and improve. We should be applauding such an effort by the innovators of this search engine instead of being so critical. I believe my comments is what most muslims agree to. May Allah shower his Blessings upon you guys. Amen.
Salam. I am from Malaysia.
I was so excited when I found out about ‘iamhalal’. I have been promoting it to my muslim community as to how we can make surfing the WWW much more safer for our children. All was fine until one of my friends did a search in our own language (Malay Language) to test the safety of ‘iamhalal’ search engine with regards to porno sites; we were disturbingly surprised that results from the search did list sites that are of that nature. I had to pacify these groups by saying, among other things, that since ‘iamhalal’ is a new kid on the block, we should give them a chance to look into this problem and allow them to seek a solution to it.
I do have a suggestion.
I believe that the Malay Language Vocabulary should be studied by your team in order to understand which words would and/or could trigger undesirable search results. The Malay Language is spoken by about 250 million people ( 90% Muslims) in South East Asia. I believe that we form the next biggest language block of internet users after the English Language, who would be using ‘iamhalal’ search engine.
THANKS,I REALLY LIKE THIS SEARCH engine.I HOPE ALL THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY JOIN THIS SEARCH engine BECAUSE THEY WILL PROVIDE BETTER FACILITIES FOR MUSLIM,S YOUNG GENERATION.IT WILL MAKE A HALAL AND PAAKCULTURE IN FUTURE.MAY ALLAH SHOWER HIS BLESSINGS UPON YOU GUYS.AMEEN
i am happy and proud to find that as a Muslim we have achieved to the platform where we can move ahead to face the new challenges of media .
THANKS,I REALLY LIKE THIS SEARCH engine.I HOPE ALL THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY JOIN THIS SEARCH engine BECAUSE THEY WILL PROVIDE BETTER FACILITIES FOR MUSLIM,S YOUNG GENERATION.IT WILL MAKE A HALAL AND PAAKCULTURE IN FUTURE.MAY ALLAH SHOWER HIS BLESSINGS UPON YOU GUYS.AMEEN
i think after this new muslim’s search engine muslims will get their own place in the world
i love islam
seriously I’m assuming the above two comments are spam!
We had a meeting with a web filtering service, websense, and what they do is include human factor that categorizes websites discovered daily. They don’t depend on crawlers that index sites depending on content and keywords only, because it can never compare to human conclusion … yet!
Let’s say a person types in a “haram” word “sex” what they can do is exclude the results not the keyword itself, which I think is totally STUPID, there are medical, social, legitimate sites that come under that word.
You get my point, I hate it when they come up with these stuff under Islamic intentions! Ridiculous. Thank you, but I’m sticking to Google :D
thanks,I really like this search engine.i hope all the muslim community join this search engine.the will provide better facilties for muslims young generation.this site is good.very nice.
Anyway….. TQ to the person who create this first muslim SEo…give us much info of halal….so i hope all Muslims community should use this SEO…
Assalam-o-Alaikum.
I really appriciate the step taken for the revival & explosure of Islam, Islamic Culture, Traditions and Customs.
I request all my Muslim brothers and sisters to make http://www.imhalal.com your home page.
this is very good effort to protect muslim ummah specially young generation from haram things(sites).May ALLAH guide us.
Assalam-o-Alaikum.
I wholeheartedly appriciate the step taken for the revival & explosure of Islam, Islamic Culture, Traditions and Customs,true humanity.
It is a great step towards humanity against brutish world.Civilisation cannot sustain without real development of mind & manner.We should be careful about our next generation .May Allah bless all.
This 1st islamic search engine provide the muslims an opportunity to express their feelings according to their religious instructions. it is a platform for the unity of muslims. all muslims must use it instead of google and others
IMHALAL 1st Islamic Search engine has closed for forever..because team had been invested all money on this Search engine but for Imhalal search engine future they needed a investor as a helper but any country did not help them that’swhy Imhalal Islamic Search engine has closed
Muhammed Saleem: There are only a handful of Arab started technology firms that made it into fame and glory. The market of real estate is much faster and more understandable for the rich investors. It’s not so common in this part of the world, though in Kuwait at least, i see gradual increasing interest as some sites are making good money and sell out for good fortune
IMHALAL team will comeback soon with better performance with no funding, supporting etc. problems. Inshallah
You will look good and feel comfort when you on North Face Jackets Sale, and we provide low price, safe and fast delivery. Don’t miss chance.
i never thought i’d see a search engine like this! but your testing does show it needs alot of tweaking.