TA3BEER

While spending time pouring of the Al Jazeera Arabic and English websites for a separate research project, I stumbled across sometime entirely new (to me, at least): aljazeera.com.

For years, the Al Jazeera domain for both Arabic and later their English site has been aljazeera.net. As any frequent viewer of the English channel can attest to, one is constantly reminded of where to find them on the web: “Al-Jazeera-dot-net-foreward-shash-English” (or aljazeera.net/english). I had always been struck by this constant advertisement of their web address, because it was, in fact, false.

Entering “aljazeera.net/english” into one’s web browser redirects the visitor to the actual location of Al Jazeera English’s website: english.aljazeera.net. I have wondered for year why Al Jazeera didn’t simply tell people to visit “English-dot-aljazeera-dot-net.” It would seem like a cleaner and clearer address, getting rid of any need for “shushes” (which people are sometimes confusing as “forward slashes” and “backslashes” … better to have no slashes altogether).

An then comes along Al Jazeera English’s new show, the Stream. The Stream launched this month as an interactive social media show, which is broadcast simultaneously online and on AJE’s satellite channel. The Stream brings up two interesting issues, however, and also led to my discovery of the dot-com (aljazeera.com) domain.

With the launch of the Stream came the launch of the program’s website, hosted on the Al Jazeera website. Well, sort of. The Stream’s website exists at stream.aljazeera.com. This may not seem like a big deal, but after years of being trained by Al Jazeera to find them at their dot-net domain, it was striking. It also required further investigation.

According to Wikipedia, the aljazeera.com domain was acquired by the Al Jazeera Network in March of this year (2011). I was able to verify that the ownership records (link: http://www.whois.net/whois/aljazeera.com.com) do indeed show that, as of March 16th, 2011, the Al Jazeera Network in Doha is the owner of the domain. Al Jazeera tried to acquire this domain unsuccessfully (link: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005-0309.html) in 2005 from AlJazeera Publishing, of no relation to the media network.

This acquisition is now a fait accompli, but not advertised anywhere on the Al Jazeera media outlets. The only exception to this rule is the Stream.

Poking around the dot-com domain shows that it functions as a de facto portal for the English language website. Visiting “english.aljazeera.net” and “aljazeera.com” will show the exact same page, at different addresses, leading one to assume that the dot-com is a mirror of the original AJE website.

Does this mean that Al Jazeera will be shifting its English content to a separate domain, and not keeping it buried in subdomains and subdirectories on the dot-net site? Probably. Since the network has yet to advertise the dot-com domain outside the context of the Stream, it is probably planing on a gradual transition.

Interestingly, looking at public traffic statistics for the dot-com domain (link: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/aljazeera.com) shows that nearly 85% of visitors already direct themselves to the root domain (aljazeera.com) and only 15% go to the Stream subdomain (stream.aljazeera.com). Normal internet use seems to be to go to the main domain, even if one is directed to go to a subdomain or a subdirectory. I wonder how many visitors wind up on the dot-net website seeking out English content, only to struggle to find the “English” button at the top of the page. Current traffic statistics (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/aljazeera.net) point out that over 30% of web traffic to the dot-net domain goes to the AJE subdomains, but this number could also reflect users going to the root (AJA) site and then redirecting themselves to the English site.

Ultimately a shift to two domains, an Arabic dot-net and an English dot-com would clear up some of these gray areas encountered when looking at traffic statistics. It also would reinforce the fact that Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, despite being part of the same parent company and both having the financial backing of the Qatari Royal family, are two separate news services.

By Tighe Flanagan