Do You Need an Arabic and English Website in the UAE? Who Searches in Arabic, How Bilingual Sites Work, and What It Costs

Most small businesses in the UAE can launch in English and add Arabic later, but three groups should plan for Arabic from the start: those selling to Emirati households, those bidding for government or semi-government work, and those chasing customers across the wider Gulf. Arabic is the country’s official language, Google treats each language version as a separate page with its own address, and a proper Arabic version roughly doubles the writing, so it is a decision to make on purpose, not by default.

Do I need an Arabic version of my website in the UAE?

English is the working language of a large share of everyday commerce in the UAE, which is why so many local websites are English only and still do well. The question is not whether Arabic matters in the country. It plainly does. The question is whether your particular customers will choose you, or not choose you, because of it.

Three quick checks answer it for most owners:

• 1Look at your last 50 WhatsApp enquiries. If a noticeable number arrive in Arabic, your website is already missing those people.
• 2Think about who signs the cheque. Government entities, semi-government bodies and many large local companies expect a company profile they can read and share in Arabic.
• 3Check your growth plan. If you want customers in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait or Bahrain, Arabic pages stop being optional quite quickly.

If none of the three apply, an English site done well will serve you better than a two-language site done badly. If one or more apply, read on before you ask anyone for a quote.

Which UAE businesses should build in Arabic first, and which can wait?

Who actually searches in Arabic in the UAE?

We looked for a reliable public figure for the share of UAE searches typed in Arabic and did not find one, so we will not quote a number. What can be said with confidence is that Google handles about 93% of all searches in the UAE (StatCounter, September 2026), so Google’s behaviour is what decides whether your Arabic pages are seen.

Google decides the language of a page from the words a visitor can see. Its own documentation says it does not use code-level hints such as the lang attribute to work this out. In practice, someone who searches in Arabic is shown Arabic pages. If your site has none, you are not in that race at all, however good your English pages are.

To measure demand for your own trade, use free tools you may already have. Google Search Console shows the searches that bring people to your site. Your Google Business Profile shows how people found your listing. And your staff know which language customers use when they phone.

How does Google handle a website in two languages?

Google publishes clear guidance for sites in more than one language, and following it is what separates a bilingual site that ranks from one that confuses search engines. The key points, in plain words:

• 1Give each language its own address, for example yoursite.ae/en/services and yoursite.ae/ar/services. Google recommends separate URLs rather than switching language with cookies or browser settings.
• 2Keep one language per page. Google advises against side-by-side translations, and against translating only the menu while the main text stays in English.
• 3Link the two versions with hreflang tags. Each version must list itself and every other version. For Arabic aimed at the UAE the code is ar-AE; for English, en or en-AE.
• 4Add an x-default version, the page Google shows when a visitor’s language matches neither.
• 5Do not redirect visitors automatically based on their browser language. Google warns this can stop people and search engines from seeing all versions. Show a clear language switch instead.
• 6Translate the page title and description too, not only the body text. They are what appears in search results.

What changes when a page reads right to left?

Arabic is written right to left, so an Arabic page is not just an English page with different words. The whole layout mirrors. The W3C, the body that sets web standards, recommends declaring the direction on the page itself with dir="rtl" rather than only flipping things with styling. A designer who has built RTL pages before will handle these details without being asked:

• 1The menu, logo position and reading order flip, so the eye starts on the right.
• 2Arrows and “next” icons point the other way. A right-pointing arrow means “back” in Arabic.
• 3Some things must not flip: phone numbers, prices such as AED 250, email addresses and web addresses stay left to right inside Arabic text.
• 4Pick one style of digits and use it everywhere. Many UAE businesses use the same digits in both languages; what matters is consistency.
• 5Use a font designed for Arabic. Arabic letters usually need a slightly larger size and more line spacing than Latin text to read comfortably on a phone.
• 6Never put words inside images. Text baked into a banner or menu photo cannot be translated, read by search engines or enlarged by someone with poor eyesight.
• 7Forms need care: name fields flow right to left, but a phone number field should still accept digits left to right.
• 8The WhatsApp button on an Arabic page should open a chat with an Arabic first message, so the conversation starts in the customer’s language.

Is translating my English pages into Arabic good enough?

Translation is a fair starting point, but a website is a sales document, and word-for-word translation tends to read stiffly. Most business websites use Modern Standard Arabic for the main text, because every Arabic reader understands it, with short buttons and headings that sound natural to Gulf customers.

Machine translation is fine for a first draft and poor as a final version. Google’s spam policies list automated transformations, translation among them, as one way people churn out large numbers of low-value pages. A handful of carefully reviewed pages is a different thing from that, but the lesson is the same: a person who reads Arabic natively should check every page before it goes live.

Two smaller points catch people out. If your trade licence shows an Arabic trade name, use exactly that name on the Arabic pages. And keep service names consistent between the two languages, so a customer who switches halfway does not think they have landed on a different business.

How much does an Arabic and English website cost in the UAE?

Published UAE price guides (2026) put a business website at anywhere from about AED 999 with a freelancer to AED 8,000–25,000 with an agency. A second language moves you up that range for one honest reason: every page has to be written, checked and laid out twice. The design work does not double, because the mirrored layout is built once, but the words do.

Ask every provider three things in writing: whether Arabic is priced per page or as a flat extra, who writes and checks the Arabic text, and whether changes later (a new price, a new service) are made in both languages at once. The last one matters most. A bilingual site where the Arabic pages are a year out of date does more harm than an English-only one.

Adyft Sites prices in the UAE are AED 3,499 setup plus AED 199 a month for Starter (5 pages, live in under 7 days) and AED 7,999 plus AED 449 a month for Growth (25 pages, about 12 days). The monthly fee covers hosting, SSL, security, small changes sent by WhatsApp and a monthly visitor report. FAQ, Contact and Privacy pages are included free. If you need Arabic, say so at the start and ask us how the Arabic pages fit your plan before you pay. It is the same question you should ask anyone.

Two worked examples

An air-conditioning maintenance company in Sharjah, with six technicians covering villas in Sharjah and Ajman, gets enquiries in both languages. A sensible first build is five pages in each language: home, AC servicing, AC repair, areas covered and contact, ten pages in all, with the WhatsApp button on every page set to the right language. The about page and seasonal offers can wait. That fits comfortably inside a 25-page plan and leaves room to add a page per area later.

A two-person bookkeeping firm in Business Bay, whose clients are mostly English-speaking founders of small companies, is the opposite case. Its enquiries arrive in English, its proposals are in English and its referrals come from other English-speaking founders. It should spend its budget on clear English service pages, prices and a strong FAQ, and look at the question again in a year. Adding Arabic now would cost money and keep costing it in upkeep, for little return.

What to check before you publish the Arabic version

• 1Every Arabic page has its own address, and the language switch on each page goes to the matching page, not the home page.
• 2hreflang tags are in place on both versions, each listing itself and the other.
• 3Page titles and descriptions are written in Arabic, not left in English.
• 4A native Arabic reader has checked every page, including buttons, form messages and the 404 page.
• 5Phone numbers, prices and email addresses display correctly inside Arabic sentences.
• 6Your licence name and number match the licence exactly in both languages.
• 7The privacy page and contact form exist in Arabic too, since people should understand what they agree to.
• 8Your Google Business Profile links to the right version, and its description reads well.

It is a useful list to hand to any designer you hire, Adyft Sites included, and to check yourself before the Arabic pages go live.

Sources: Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/managing-multi-regional-sites · Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions · Google Search Central, Spam policies — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies · W3C, Structural markup and right-to-left text in HTML — https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-html-dir · StatCounter, Search engine market share UAE, September 2026 — https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/united-arab-emirates