Arabic vs English: why AI answers differ by language, and what to do about it

Why the language of the question matters

AI platforms do not keep one list of recommendations and translate it on request. Each answer is built from what the platform learned in training and what it finds when it searches, and both depend on the language of the question.

• Different searches, different sources. When a platform searches the web, it generally searches in the language of the question. An Arabic question tends to retrieve Arabic pages: Arabic news sites, Arabic directory listings, reviews written in Arabic. An English question retrieves English ones. If your business is well covered in one language and missing in the other, the answers will reflect that.
• Different amounts of content. For many local categories, much more has been written about businesses in one language than in the other. Where a language has only a few relevant sources, a single directory page or article can shape the whole answer.
• Different spellings of the same name. An Arabic name can be written several ways: with or without a hamza, with a taa marbuta or a haa at the end, with an alif maqsura or a yaa. An English name can be transliterated into Arabic in more than one way, and the reverse. If a platform cannot connect the spellings, it may treat them as different businesses, or not recognise yours at all.
• Different wording, different intent. Customers in the Gulf, the Levant and Egypt phrase the same need in different words. A question in Egyptian wording can lead to different searches from the same question in Modern Standard Arabic, and so to different sources.

This does not look like a passing glitch. It follows from how search-based answers work: an answer can only be as good as the sources available in the language it was asked in.

How to check your own gap

1. Take the questions your customers ask and write each one in both languages, the way customers would actually phrase it, not as a word-for-word translation.
2. Ask each version on each platform you care about, logged out or in a temporary chat. Note who is named and which sources are cited.
3. Repeat on different days. One pair of answers tells you little; a pattern over several rounds tells you whether the gap is real.
4. Compare the two sides. Are you named in one language and not the other? Are the cited sources Arabic, English or a mix? Is your name written the way you write it?

If you are named in English and missing in Arabic, the rest of this guide is your to-do list. If it is the other way round, the same steps apply in reverse.

Publish real Arabic content

The most direct fix for an Arabic gap is Arabic pages that deserve to be cited.

• Write in Arabic, for Arabic readers. Machine-translated pages are often stiff, use the wrong words for local services, and miss the questions Arabic-speaking customers actually ask. Have a fluent writer produce the pages, or at least review them properly.
• Choose a register deliberately. Modern Standard Arabic reads naturally across the region and suits most service pages. If your customers are in one country, include the local words they use for your services, for example in headings or in an FAQ.
• Give each language its own URL. Separate pages, for example under /ar/, with hreflang tags linking the two versions, tell search systems which page serves which language. Avoid swapping the language of one URL with a script, which crawlers may never see.
• Keep the facts identical. Prices, addresses and hours must match across languages. A contradiction between your own Arabic and English pages is worse than having no Arabic page.

Settle your Arabic name

Decide on one Arabic spelling of your business name and use it on your site, your signage, your listings and your social profiles. Somewhere prominent, such as your About page and your map listing, state both names together: the English name with the Arabic name beside it. This gives a platform an explicit link between the two.

Other people will still write your name their own way. Do not fight every variant; make sure the one you control is consistent, and when you measure, count the variants as you rather than as unknown businesses.

Be present in Arabic sources

Look at the sources cited in your Arabic answers. They can differ from the English ones: Arabic news sites, Arabic versions of directories and apps, and reviews written in Arabic. Then work on them:

• Fill in the Arabic description on every listing that supports one, instead of leaving the English text in the Arabic field.
• Make sure the Arabic press and portals that cover your sector know who you are, with an Arabic fact sheet ready to send.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews in the language they are comfortable with; an Arabic review is an Arabic source.

Measure the two languages separately

Report Arabic and English visibility side by side rather than as one blended number. A blended figure can hide a business that is well known in English and invisible in Arabic, and in a market where most customers ask in Arabic, the Arabic figure is the one that matters.

Check that your measurement recognises Arabic spellings of your name, including attached prefixes such as “wa-” (and) or “bi-” (with) joined to the name, while not counting a different business with a similar name. Otherwise it will undercount your Arabic mentions, or overcount them. The same questions asked in both languages also make a fair test: the only thing that changes is the language.

How Pharos helps

Pharos tracks questions in Arabic, in English, or in both side by side, so you can compare how your business shows up in each language on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Mode. Arabic questions can be written in Gulf, Levantine or Egyptian wording. Mentions are matched across Arabic spelling variants and attached prefixes, with guards against false matches, and every answer is kept in full with its sources, so you can see which sites your Arabic answers draw on.