Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, got second position while another Saudi newspaper, Al-Jazirah, came fourth, sabq.org e-newspaper reported Saturday. Al-Ahram of Egypt won the top position while Al-Watan of Kuwait came third.
4imn.com includes 7,000 Newspapers, ranked by web popularity, in 200 countries. "The ranking is based on an algorithm including three unbiased and independent web metrics extracted from three different search engines: Google Page Rank, Yahoo Inbound Link and Alexa Traffic Rank," the directory's website said.
The aim of this website is to provide an approximate popularity ranking of worldwide newspapers based on the popularity of their websites. "We do not — by any means — claim to rank newspapers by the quality of their journalistic effort or reputation," it said. The 4imn.com web ranking is updated every six months.
Arab News Editor in Chief Khaled Almaeena expressed his satisfaction at the survey result giving a high ranking for his paper in the Arab world and thanked readers around the globe for taking time to surf its website. "One thing that is different (about Arab News) is that it represents the heart and soul of the Arab world. It is a paper that has fought for the underprivileged," he added.
In a previous survey conducted by ArabianBusiness.com in 2008 Arab News received No. 1 position as readers in the Gulf voted it as their most favorite English language newspaper. The Saudi daily attracted 26.49 percent of the vote, closely followed by Bahrain's Gulf Daily News on 24.43 percent.
The Kuwait-based daily Arab Times came third with 13.13 percent of the vote, while UAE daily Gulf News was fourth with 11.37 percent. The ArabianBusiness.com poll results indicate that despite the introduction of several new English language newspapers over the last few years the older papers have retained their loyal readership and remain popular.
